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PAPERS OF THE SOUTHWESTERN EXPEDITION 
NUMBER ONE 


AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 












P L A T E 1 



General view of the Pecos Valley takeii from an ancient shrine north of the ruins. 



'n.e cx.-avati,.,.. on the Vurlh T.-rra.e. The tow .vilN of the ohlest seltlen.ent appear in the left foref^roun.!. To the rip-ht an.l al.ove are the re.nains of the Kreal terrace.l <.onuMnnity-hon.se of later lin„.s. 




























DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY 
PHILLIPS ACADEMY • ANDOVER • MASSACHUSETTS 


AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 

SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 

WITH A PRELIMINARY ACCOUNT OF THE 
EXCAVATIONS AT PECOS 


BY 

ALFRED VINCENT KIDDER 

ft 



NEW HAVEN 

PUBLISHED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY 
PHILLIPS ACADEMY • ANDOVER MASSACHUSETTS 
BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1924 


M.t. 


FT26 


COPYRIGHTED 1924 BY YALE UNRTRSITY PRESS 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
BY THE ANDOVER PRESS 



SEP-8’21 


Cl A 8 017 5 0 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Preface ............. 1 

PART ONE 

History of Pecos ........... 4 

PART TWO 

Fieldwork at Pecos .......... 16 

Previous Investigations ......... 16 

Fieldwork of Phillips Academy ....... 17 

First Season (1915) ......... 17 

Second Season (1916) . . . . . . . . . 20 

Third Season (1917) . . . . . . . . . 24 

Fourth Season (1920) ......... 24 

Fifth Season (1921) ......... 27 

Sixth Season (1922) ......... 28 

Summary of Results ........ 31 


PART THREE 

Southwestern Archaeology .... 

The Modern Pueblos .... 

The Prehistoric Pueblos .... 

The San Juan ..... 

PiTEBLO Ruins ..... 

Chaco Canyon ..... 

Mesa Verde ..... 

Kayenta ..... 

Pre-Pueblo Ruins .... 

Post-Basket JMaker Ruins 
Basket Maker Sites .... 

Northern Peripher.\l District 
The Rio Grande ..... 

Eastern Peripheral District 
The Little Colorado .... 

The Upper Gila ..... 

The Mimbres ..... 

The Lower Gila ..... 

The Chihuahua Basin .... 

PART FOUR 

Conclusions . . . . . . . • • ■ • • 118 


36 

44 

47 

49 

49 

58 

68 

74 

76 

77 
79 
84 
87 
89 
96 

101 

105 

115 


Bibliography 


137 



















LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PLATES PAGE 

1. a, Pecos Valley, b, Excavations on North Terrace ..... frontis. 

2. General view of Pecos from the north ....... 6 

3. a. View across Arroyo de Pecos. 6, The ruin mounds from the Church . . 10 

4. Pecos in 1846. a, Church and monastery, b, Plaza .... 12 

5. Model of Pecos ........... O 

6. The Pecos Church, a, From the pueblo, b, Interior .... 18 

7. Sketch-plan of the Pecos ruins .... ... 20 

8. The eastern trenches in the great Pecos rubbish heap, a. The opening cut. 

6, Trench at twelve feet deep, c. Trench at nineteen feet deep ... 22 

0. A stratigraphic test-section in the deep rubbish, a, Cut 3, Test X. b, Cut 5, 

Test X . . ... 24 

10. Typical burials, a. Extended burial of late period, b. Partly flexed burial of 

Glaze 4 period, c, Closely flexed burial, Glaze 3 period .... 24 

11. Skeletons in the deep rubbish ......... 26 

12. North Terrace excavations, a, From the top of the ruin-mound, b. From the 

north ............ 28 

13. Architectural details, a, Typical ma.sonry. b, Conditions in the Great Quad¬ 

rangle ............ 30 

14. The west cross-cut trench, 1920 ........ 32 

15. Modern Pueblo villages, a, Taos, b, Tesuque ..... 36 

16. Modern Pueblos, a, Harvest dance at San Ildefonso. b, Kiva at San Ilde- 

fonso ............ 40 

17. Pueblo costumes, a. Woman of San Ildefonso in everyday dress. 6, Corn 

dancers at Santo Domingo ......... 42 

18. Modern Pueblo pottery ........ 42 

19. Pueblo Bonito. a, Restoration, b, Ground plan . . . 46 

20. Masonry of San Juan ruins, a, Chaco Canyon. 6, Mesa Verde, c, Kayenta 48 

21. The great kiva of the Chaco Canyon culture, a. Plan of the great kiva at 

Aztec, b. The great kiva at Chettro Kettle ...... 52 

22. Chaco Canyon Black-on-white ware ....... 54 

23. Designs of Chaco Canyon Black-on-white ware ..... 56 

24. Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado ....... 56 

25. Black-on-white bowls of the Mesa Verde culture ..... 60 

26. Designs of Mesa Verde black-on-white ware ...... 62 

27. a, Proto-Mesa Verde pottery. 6, Towers in Ruin Canyon, Utah 64 

28. Section of a kiva and dwelling-house ....... 66 

29. Kayenta cliff-houses, a, Betatakin. b, Kietsiel .... 66 

30. Kayenta pottery .......... 68 

31. Designs of Kayenta Black-on-white ware ...... 70 

32. Designs of Kayenta polychrome ware ....... 74 

33. Deformed and undeformed skulls ........ 74 

34. Pre-Pueblo pottery .......... 76 

35. Designs of pre-Pueblo Black-on-white pottery ...... 76 

36. Sandals, a, Pueblo, b, post-Basket Maker, c. Basket Maker 78 

37. A Basket Maker storage and burial cave ....... 80 

38. Basket Maker specimens ......... 82 

39. Pecos pottery, chronological series ........ 86 

40. Designs of Pecos pottery, chronological series ..... 86 








LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


vii 


PAGE 


41. 

Rio Grande habitation.s. a, A large circular pueblo, Tyuonyi. 

6, Artificial 



caves used as dwellings near Tyuonyi .... 


88 

42. 

Little Colorado pottery ...... 


90 

43. 

Typical terraced pueblo, Oraibi ..... 


92 

44. 

Black-on-wliite and corrugated pottery of Upi)er Gila type 


98 

45. 

Bowl-designs of Mimbres Black-on-white ware 


102 

46. 

Casa Grande ........ 


104 

47. 

Bird’s-eye view of a typical compound .... 


106 

48. 

Lower Gila pottery ....... 


108 

49. 

Designs of Lower Gila polychrome ware 


110 

50. 

Pottery of the Chihuahua basin ..... 


116 


FIGURES IN THE TEXT 



1. 

Supposed and actual extent of rubbish .... 


19 

2. 

Cross-section, superposition of walls, burials, etc. 


22 

3. 

Approximate limits of the Southwestern culture area 


37 

4. 

Present-day distribution of the Pueblo tribes 


38 

5. 

The culture-areas of the Southwest .... 


47 

6. 

The San Juan area . . 


48 

7. 

Chaco Canyon vessel-shapes ..... 


52 

8. 

Ground-plan of Cliff Palace ..... 


59 

9. 

Mesa Verde vessel-shapes ...... 


62 

10. 

Exterior decorations of Mesa Verde bowls 


63 

11. 

Ground-plan of unit-type dwelling .... 


66 

12. 

Ground-plan of Kietsiel ...... 


69 

13. 

Kayenta vessel-shapes ...... 


70 

14. 

Proto-Kayenta pottery designs ..... 


73 

15. 

Distribution of remains in Northern peripheral area 


80 

16. 

The Rio Grande area ...... 


85 

17. 

The Little Colorado area ...... 


90 

18. 

The U’pper Gila and Mimbres areas .... 


97 

19. 

The Lower Gila area ....... 


105 

20. 

Lower Gila vessel shapes ...... 


108 

21. 

Lower Gila red-on-gray designs ..... 


111 

22. 

Distribution of Basket Maker sites .... 


120 

23. 

Distribution of post-Basket Maker sites 


121 

24. 

Distribution of pre-Pueblo sites ..... 


123 

25. 

Distribution of Pueblo population at various periods 


127 

















AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


PREFACE 

In 1915 the Trustees of Phillips Academy, at the suggestion of Dr. Roland B. 
Dixon of Harvard University, and Dr. Hiram Bingham of Aale University, acting 
as Advisory Committee to the Trustees, for the Department of Archaeology of the 
Academy, on the foundation of the late Robert Singleton Peabody, determined to 
undertake excavations in the Pueblo area. It was desired to select a field of opera¬ 
tions large enough, and of sufficient scientific importance, to justify work upon it for 
a number of years. The author was invited to carry out the investigation and to 
submit proposals as to a site. After the consideration of a number of ruins, Pecos 
was recommended. 

The Pecos ruins lie on the headwaters of the Pecos river in San Miguel County, 
New Mexico (see map, fig. 4, p. 38); they are the remains of a large Pueblo Indian 
town, whose people figured prominently in New Mexican history from the time of 
the first arrival of the Spaniards in 1540, down to the final abandonment of the 
place in 1838. There was thus a recorded occupation of practically three centuries; 
and the archaic type of much of the broken pottery that lay scattered about the 
mounds indicated that Pecos hatl been inliabited for a great many years before the 
coming of Europeans. There is, indeed, no known ruin in the Southwest which 
seems to have been lived in continuously for so long a period. This was a most 
important consideration, because it gave rise to the hope that remains would there 
be found so stratified as to make clear the development of the various Pueblo arts, 
and thus enable us to place in their proper chronological order many other South¬ 
western ruins whose culture had long been known, but whose time-relations one to 
another were still problematical. Futhermore, Pecos had been a very large pueblo, 
and had occupied a commercially strategic position near the edge of the buffalo 
plains; for this reason it might be expected to have attracted to itself a part at least 
of any trade which entered the Southwest from other areas, and objects character¬ 
istic of those areas were likely to be found in the graves or in the stratified rubbish 
heaps at Pecos, thus j^roviding evidence as to the chronology of cultures well outside 
the Pueblo region. From the point of view of specimens also the site was a favorable 
one, because its large cemeteries had never been despoiled, and the graves promised 
a rich harvest of skeletal material and mortuary offerings. Lastly, the survivors of 
Pecos had taken refuge at the ]:)ueblo of Jemez, where their immediate descendants 
were still living; and investigations among these people could hardly fail to reveal 
much of value as to the language, customs, and ceremonies of the old town. 

Title to the land upon which the ruins lie had been held for many years by 
Gross-Kelly and Company of Las Vegas. In 1915 Mr. Harry Kelly of this firm. 



2 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


believing that so important a monument of antiquity should become public property, 
very generously arranged for the deeding of the ruins to the State Museum of New 
Mexico. The application of Phillips Academy for permission to excavate was 
promptly and cordially approved by Dr. E. L. Hewett, Director of the Museum, and 
on his recommendation was granted by the Board of Regents. No hampering 
conditions were imposed, but the Regents requested that the old mission church, 
greatly damaged by the weather and by vandalism, and in immediate danger of 
entire collapse, be so repaired and protected that no further harm should ensue. 
They also requested a representative collection of specimens from the ruin. These 
obligations were gladly assumed, and work was begun in June, 1915. 

Excavations were carried on in 1915 and 1916. From 191'7 to 1919 operations 
were suspended, but were resumed in 1920, and have continued to the present 
time. When the work was started, it was thought that five or six field-seasons 
would be sufficient to clear the site, and that a final report would be ready for 
publication about the year 1924. It has now become evident, however, that even 
without the long interruption of the war, the original schedule could not have been 
adhered to; for the site has proved to be of vastly greater extent than had been 
supposed, and the archaeological problems encountered have turned out to be so 
complex in themselves, and so far-reaching in their application, that it is not yet 
possible to set even an approximate date for the completion of the field-work. Thus 
the preparation of a single final report, covering the entire investigation, would be 
unconscionably delayed, and experience has shown that for one reason or another 
long-deferred reports often fail to appear at all. Hence it seems wiser to bring out 
from time to time shorter contributions, dealing with such parts of the work as may 
be ready for publication. While in some cases they may fail in completeness and 
finality, they will have, at least, the virtue of freshness. 

The present paper, the first of this contemplated series, is designed to give a 
brief description of Pecos and of its history, to outline the work so far accomplished, 
and to provide a background, so to speak, for the more specialized monographs 
which are to follow. The bulk of the work, however, is devoted to a general 
account of Southwestern archaeology. Beeause of the vastness of the field and the 
paucity of our knowledge, this is neeessarily far from complete; but it seems worth 
while to present even so inadequate a summary, because the true value of the 
excavation of such a site as Pecos cannot properly be appreciated without some 
knowledge of its bearing on the broader problems of the history of man in the 
Southwest. The description of the work at Pecos has been placed first in order 
that those not familiar with this particular field may be better able to visualize the 
conditions under which archaeological evidence is gathered at a pueblo ruin. The 
reader who is interested only in the wider aspeets of the subject may turn at once to 
the third seetion; or, for an even briefer summary, to the conclusions (p. 118), 
where the results of the investigation are presented in the form of a tentative 
reconstruction of Southwestern history. 

Where everyone concerned has been so helpful it is difficult to single out 
individuals for thanks, but I cannot let slip this oecasion for acknowledging my 
deep indebtedness to Drs. Dixon and Bingham, who conceived the projeet of an 


% 


PREFACE 


3 


intensive excavation at a large Southwestern site, and who gave me the opportunity 
of directing it; nor to Dr. James Hardy Ropes, Chairman of the Committee on 
Archaeology, whose sympathetic cooperation and support have made my connec¬ 
tion with the Department a thoroughly congenial one. Dr. Charles Peabody, 
Director, and Mr. Warren K. Moorehead, Curator, welcomed me most cordially to 
the Department, and have placed every facility of the Museum unreservedly at my 
disposal. 

Dr. Carl E. Guthe joined the staff in 1916, and remained with us until 1920, 
when he was called by the Carnegie Institution of Washington to undertake excava¬ 
tions of great importance in Central America. Whatever success the Pecos expedi¬ 
tion may have achieved is in large measure due to Dr. Guthe’s scientific acumen, 
ready resourcefulness, untiring industry, and unquenchable enthusiasm. 

Dr. and Mrs. S. K. Lothrop, Dr. E. A. Hooton, and Messrs. G. C. Vaillant and 
S. K. Moorehead have all worked at Pecos, and each one has contributed assistance 
of great value. During every field-season, my wife has been with me and has taken 
practically entire charge of the important and laborious task of cleaning and 
sorting the hundreds of thousands of potsherds recovered during the digging. My 
secretary. Miss Ida Sanford, has been indefatigable in the Museum, and during the 
summer of 1922 accompanied the expedition in the field. 

Without the cooperation of the authorities of the State Museum of New Alexico 
nothing, of course, could have been done; and to the P.egents of that Institution, 
together with its Director, Dr. Hewett, and the members of his staff: Messrs. K. M. 
Chapman, W. Bradfield, and L. B. Bloom, the hearty thanks of the Department are 
due. I wish also to express my appreciation of the many services rendered by 
Messrs. G. D. Hughes, J. F. Miller, J. W. Harrison, Charles Earickson and S. Gray, 
residents of the Pecos Valley, all of whom have done everything in their power to 
further the purposes of the expedition. 


PART ONE 


HISTORY OF PECOS 

The Pecos river rises in the Santa Fe range in north-central New Mexico, and 
flows in a generally southerly direction for nearly 600 miles before it empties into 
the Rio Grande in Texas. Not more than twenty miles from its source it breaks 
out of its narrow mountain canyon into a wide, rugged valley, the average eleva¬ 
tion of which is about 7000 feet. To the north the bare summit of Pecos Baldy 
rises above timberline and is only clear of snow for a few weeks in midsummer; to 
the east are the lower crests of the Tecolote chain; and to the west the red-cliffed 
barrier of the Pecos Mesa. Most of these higher lands are covered with fine forests 
of large yellow pines, and along the river are thick groves of cottonwoods and 
willows, but the valley itself is a typical bit of the arid Southwest; its soil is red 
adobe, gashed with deep, dry arroyos; its sandstone ledges are barren; its adobe 
flats clothed with stunted junipers, pinyons, and cactus (pi. 1, a). About a mile 
west of the river lies the ruined pueblo. It occupies the flat top of a long, narrow 
tongue of rock which stands well above the surrounding land and from which one 
can look out over the whole country. In the broad, sandy bed of an arroyo that 
swings by the base of the rocks, is a never-failing spring of pure, cold water. Such 
an ideal combination of easily defensible building site and abundant water-supply 
could not fail to appeal to the ancient village Indian, and the Pecos mesilla 
was settled in very early times. It eventually grew from a small town to a very 
large one, and at the time of the coming of the Spaniards it contained, without 
much doubt, more human beings than any other permanent community in what is 
now the territory of the United States. 

Pecos was discovered by the first Spanish expedition that entered the South¬ 
west.* The exploration of that country was brought about by rumors of rich 
cities in the unknown lands to the north of New Spain, circulated by one Cabeza de 
A aca, a survivor of an expedition to Florida under Pamfilo de Narvaez. Wrecked 
on the Gulf coast in 1528, the majority of Narvaez’s men lost their lives, but 
de Vaca, accompanied by a negro called Esteban and two other Spaniards, succeeded 
after eight years of great hardship in making his way westward from tribe to tribe. 
He crossed southern Texas, and finally reached the Spanish settlements on the 
Pacific coast of Alexico. During his wanderings de Vaca had heard stories of large 
and opulent cities in the north; and these stories so interested Mendoza, then 
governor of New Spain, that he sent out a Franciscan monk. Fray Marcos de 
Nizza, to investigate them. 

Nizza, with the negro Esteban as interpreter, started north in 1539. On the 

*Material for the present brief historical sketch has been derived almost entirely from the writings of Bandelier, 
Bolton, Bancroft, Twitchell, and ^Yinship. References to the original Spanish sources can be found in the copious 
footnotes of those authors. See Bolton, 1916; Bancroft, 1889; Winship, 1896; Twitchell, 1911, 1914; Bandelier, 
1881, 1890, a, 1892, a. The full titles of works quoted will be found in the bibliography at the end of this volume. 


HISTORY OF PECOS 




way he was temporarily delayed; and Esteban, sent ahead to reconnoitre, exceeded 
his instructions, pushed through to what is now New Mexico, and reached the first 
of the cities”. Just what occurred there will never be known, but Esteban was 
doubtless overbearing and arrogant; at all events he was promptly imprisoned and 
very shortly killed. \Mien Nizza, following a few days’ journey behind, arrived in 
the neighborhood, he was met by some survivors of Esteban’s Indian escort in full 
flight southward, and was told by them of the death of the negro. Not daring to 
enter the country openly, yet hesitating to return without some definite information, 
the friar ventured to the edge of the valley in which the “cities” lay, and obtained 
a view of one of them from a long distance off. He was much im])ressed by its 
apparent size, and by the tales which Esteban’s Indians told him; and when he had 
succeeded at last in making his way back to Mexico, he set the capital on fire with 
glowing accounts of the “Seven Cities of Cibola”.* 

It must be remembered that at this time the Spanish in Mexico were in just the 
proper state of mind to be inflamed by stories of golden lands. The glories of the 
Montezunias were fresh in everyone’s memory, and Pizarro had recently dazzled 
the world with his discovery of the riches of the Incas. Only too willing to believe 
in the wonders in the north and wishing to profit by them at once, Mendoza im¬ 
mediately equipped a large expedition, placed it under the command of Francisco 
Vasquez de Coronado, and in the spring of 1540 despatched it upon its journey of 
discovery and conquest.f 

After a long and difficult march, hindered by failure of provisions, and the 
attacks of savage tribes, the army reached the fabled cities. The disappointment of 
all hands is most graphically expressed by Castaneda, the chronicler of the expedi¬ 
tion: “When they saw the first village, which was Cibola, such were the curses 
that some hurled at Friar Marcos that I pray God may protect him from them. It 
is a little unattractive village, looking as if it had been crumpled all up together. 
There are mansions in New Spain which make a better appearance at a distance. 

After overcoming some resistance by the inhabitants, the Spaniards entered 
the town and took possession of it and the surrounding country in the name of the 
King. This first pueblo to fall into the power of the white man was Hawikuh, one 
of the Zufii villages in western New Mexico (see map, fig. 4,p.38).** Hawikuh was 
typical of all the other pueblos of that time. They were really huge apartment- 
houses with hundreds of small living rooms grouped closely together, and often 
terraced to a height of four or five stories. The women built the walls of stone and 
adobe mud, the men cut and set the roof-beams. The women owned the houses, and 
the unmarried men lived, for the most part, in round, subterranean rooms located 
in the yards and courts of the town. The people supported themselves by growing- 
corn, beans, and squashes; made fine pottery, raised cotton and wove it into 
serviceable garments, and kept numbers of domesticated turkeys. The Spanish 
admired the cleanliness and order of the pueblos, and were struck by the simple 

*ror an account of the wanderings of Cabeza de Vaca see Bandelier, 1890, a,chap. II; Nizza’s journey is dis¬ 
cussed at length in chap. IV of the same work. 

fThe Coronado expedition is exhaustively treated in Winship, 1896. 
tWinship, 1896, p. 483. 

**Hodge, 1895. 


6 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


J 


democratic form of government, administered by the older men. They were, 
however, deeply chagrined at the lack of the expected riches of gold and silver, and 
determined to continue their explorations in the hope of finding better things 
further on. 

They stayed in Cibola for a time to rest thelnselves and to allow their horses to 
recuperate. Coronado, in the meantime, instructed the Cibolans to let it be known 
among all the other Pueblos that he wished them to come to confer with him and 
render allegiance. There shortly arrived a deputation from Ciciiye, as Pecos was 
called by the earlier conquistadores. Castaneda describes the visit and its results 
as follows:* 

“Some Indians came to Cibola from a village which was seventy leagues east 
of this province, called Cicuye. Among them was a captain who was called Bigotes 
(Whiskers) by our men, because he wore a long moustache. He was a tall, well- 
built young fellow, with a fine figure. He told the general that they had come in 
response to the notice which had been given, to offer themselves as friends, and that 
if we wanted to go through their country they would consider us as their friends. 
They brought a present of tanned hides and shields and head-pieces, which were 
very gladly received, and the general gave them some glass dishes and a number of 
pearls and little bells which they prized highly, because these were things they had 
never seen. They described some cows which, from a picture that one of them had 
painted on his skin, seemed to be cows, although from the hides this did not seem 
possible, because the hair was woolly and snarled so that we could not tell what 
sort of skins they had.f The general ordered Hernando de Alvarado to take twenty 
companions and go with them, and gave him a commission for eighty days, after 
which he should return to give an account of what he had found. Captain Alvarado 
started on his journey and in five days reached a village which was on a rock called 
Acuco (Acoma, see map, fig. 4, p. 38) having a population of about two hundred 
men. . . . From here they went to a province called Triguex, three days dis¬ 
tant. J The people all came out peacefully, seeing that Whiskers was with them. 
Alvarado sent messengers back from here to advise the general to come and winter 
in this country. The general was not a little relieved to hear that the country was 
growing better. Five days from here he came to Cicuye (Pecos, see map, fig. 4, 
p. 38), a very strong village four stories high, a village of nearly five hundred warriors, 
who are feared throughout that country. It is square, situated on a rock, with a 
large court or yard in the middle, containing the estufas. The houses are all alike, 
four stories high. One can go over the top of the whole village without there being 
a street to hinder. There are corridors going all around it at the first two stories, by 
which one can go around the whole village. These are like outside balconies, and 
they are able to protect themselves under these. The houses do not have doors 
below, but they use ladders, which can be lifted up like a drawbridge, and so go up 
to the corridors which are on the inside of the village. As the doors of the houses 


*Winship, 1896, narrative of Castaneda. The quotations are literal, but have been pieced together to make a 
consecutive account. 

tThis refers, of course, to the buffalo. 

tProbably near the present site of Bernalillo on the Rio Grande. 



PLATE 



GENERAL ^TEW OF PECOS FROM THE NORTH 









1 


I 




t 


s 

« 






>■ 








I 


HISTORY OF PECOS 


7 




open on the corridor of that story, the corridor serves as a street. The houses that 
open on the plain are right back of these that open on the court, and in time of war 
they go through those behind them. The village is inclosed by a low wall of stone. 
The people of this village boast that no one has been able to conquer them and that 
they conquer whatever villages they wish. The people and their customs are like 
those of the other villages. The people came out from the village with signs of joy 
to welcome Hernando de Alvarado and their captain, and brought them into the 
town with drums and pipes something like flutes, of which they have a great many. 
They made many ])resents of cloth and turquoises, of which there are quantities in 
that region. The Spaniards enjoyed themselves here for several days and talked 
with an Indian slave, a native of the country toward Florida.* This fellow said that 
there were large settlements in the farther part of that country. Hernando de 
Alvarado took him to guide them to the cows; but he told them so many and such 
great things about the wealth of gold and silver in his country that they did not 
care about looking for cows, but returned after they had seen some few, to report 
the rich news to the general. They called the Indian ‘Turk’ because he looked like 
one. . . . The general sent Hernando de Alvarado back to Cicuye to demand 
some gold .bracelets which this Turk said they had taken from him at the time they 
captured him. Alvarado went, and was received as a friend at the village, and 
when he demanded the bracelets they said they knew nothing at all about them, 
saying the Turk was deceiving him and was lying. Captain Alvarado, seeing that 
there were no other means, got the captain Whiskers and the governor to come to 
his tent, and when they had come he put them in chains. The villagers prepared to 
fight, and let fly their arrows, denouncing Hernando de Alvarado, and saying that he 
was a man who had no respect for peace and friendship. Hernando de Alvarado 
started back to Tiguex, where the general kept them prisoners more than six months. 
This began the want of confidence in the word of the Spaniards whenever there was 
talk of peace from this time on, as will be seen by what happened afterward.” 

Coronado had in the meantime moved his army into winter quarters at Tiguex, 
near the present site of Bernalillo on the Rio Grande. Here the overbearing con¬ 
duct of the Spaniards soon resulted in difficulties with the Indians, resulting in the 
siege of a pueblo and the massacre of its inhabitants. To quote again from 
Castaneda: 

“During the siege of Tiguex, the general decided to go to Cicuye, and take the 
governor with him, in order to give him his liberty and to promise them that he 
would give Whiskers his liberty and leave him in the village, as soon as he should 
start for Quivira. He was received j^eacefully when he reached Cicuye, and entered 
the village with several soldiers. They received their governor with much joy and 
gratitude. After looking over the village and speaking with the natives he returned 
to his army, leaving Cicuye at peace, in the hope of getting back their captain 
Whiskers.” 

In the spring of 1541 Coronado set out with high hopes for the land called 
Quivira, so glowingly described to him by the Turk. “The army left Tiguex on the 
5th of May, and returned to Cicuye, which, as I have said, is twenty-five leagues 

*This, of course, merely means the country to the east. 


8 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


from there, taking Whiskers with them. Arrived there, he gave them their captain, 
who already went about freely with a guard. The village was very glad to see him, 
and the people were peaceful and offered food. The governor and Whiskers gave 
the general a young fellow called Xabe, a native of Qiiivira, who could give them 
information about the country. This fellow said that there was gold and silver, but 
not as much of it as the Turk had said. The Turk, however, continued to declare 
that it was as he had said. He went as a guide, and thus the army started off from 
here. The army started from Cicuye, leaving the village at peace and, as it seemed, 
contented, and under obligations to maintain the friendship because their governor 
and captain had been restored to them.” 

This journey out into the great buffalo plains was another series of disappoint¬ 
ments. Week after week the adventurers traveled across the level wastes, and the 
further they went the more certain it became that the Turk had been lying to them, 
undoubtedly prompted thereto by the people of Pecos. He said, indeed, just before 
he was finally garroted by the exasperated Spaniards: “that the people at Cicuye 
had asked him to lead them off onto the plains and lose them, so that the horses 
would die when their provisions gave out, and they would be so weak if they ever 
returned that they could be killed without any trouble, and thus they could take 
revenge for what had been done to them. This was the reason why he had led them 
astray, supposing that they did not know how to hunt or to live without corn, while 
as for the gold, he did not know where there was any of it.” 

Worn out by their wanderings, and desj^airing of any success in this direction, 
the army turned back, and after nearly a month came again to Pecos. Here the 
advance party was unpleasantly surprised to find the people actively hostile; so 
they pushed on to Tiguex without stopping. Pecos was, however, reduced to sub¬ 
mission by Arellano before the arrival of the main body, and when Coronado reached 
the place he w^as well received. 

The winter of 1541-42 was spent at Tiguex, and in the spring Coronado 
decided to return to New Spain. Two devoted Franciscans, however, elected to stay 
and endeavor to convert the natives to Christianity. Castaneda says: “Friar Juan 
de Padilla, a regular brother of the lesser (Franciscan) order, and another. Friar 
Luis, a lay brother, told the general that they wanted to remain in that country, 
Friar Juan de Padilla in Quivira, because his teachings seemed to promise fruit 
there, and Friar Luis at Cicuye. The general sent a company to escort them as far 
as Cicuye, where Friar Luis stopped, while Friar Juan went on back to Quivira. 
He was martyred a short time after he arrived there. Friar Luis remained at Cicuye. 
Nothing more has been heard about him since, but before the army left Tiguex 
some men who went to take him a number of sheep that were left for him to keep, 
met him as he was on his way to visit some other villages, which were fifteen or 
twenty leagues from Cicuye, accompanied by some followers. He felt very hopeful 
that he was liked at the village and that his teachings would bear fruit, although he 
complained that the old men were falling away from him. I, for my part, believe 
that they finally killed him.” 

Thus Pecos was doubtless the scene of one of the first Christian martyrdoms to 
take place in the Lbiited States; and it was certainly the first place in the United 
States at which livestock was introduced. 


HISTORY OF PECOS 


9 


After the withdrawal of the Coronado expedition, no Spaniard set foot on New 
Mexican soil for nearly forty years. In 1581, however. Fray Rodriguez and two 
other priests, with a small escort of soldiers under Francisco Sanchez Chamuscado, 
pushed up the Rio Grande to the neighborhood of Bernalillo, and later turned east, 
where they visited three pueblos and heard of others. One of the three may have 
been Pecos, but the meagre accounts give us no information about it. At the close 
of the year Chamuscado and his men withdrew to the south, reluctantly leaving the 
Franciscans to their work of proselytizing among the people of the Rio Grande. 

Late in 1582 Antonio de Espejo and Friar Bernadino Beltran led an expedition 
into the north to determine the fate of the three missionaries. On their arrival at 
the pueblo of Puara (in the neighborhood of the present town of San Marcial, New 
Mexico), they learned that Rodriguez and his companions had all been killed by the 
Indians. Although the real object of the expedition had now been accomplished, 
Espejo determined to take advantage of the opportunity to make further explora¬ 
tions. With a mere handful of men he set out upon one of the most remarkable 
journeys on record. He stopped at Acoma, Zuni, and the Hopi towns, and swinging 
south passed through what is now central Arizona. He then returned to the Rio 
Grande via Zuni and visited the pueblos north of Santa Fe. Again turning south 
he crossed the mountains, and on his way back to Mexico passed through Pecos and 
followed down the Pecos river. 

The next expedition into New Mexico took place in 1590. Its leader was 
Castano de Sosa, who took with him a number of Spaniards, both men and women, 
with the intention of founding a colony. He entered the country via the Rio 
Grande and the Pecos, travelling up the latter river until he reached the vicinity of 
the pueblo. A scouting party had preceded him. The events which followed are 
so interesting, and throw so much light on the condition of Pecos at this time, that 
I quote the account of them that has been summarized by Miss Hull from de Sosa’s 
report.* 

“On the 23d of the month (December, 1590), Sosa and his secretary, iVndres 
Perez, who were riding somewhat in advance of the rest of the party, descried in the 
distance a woeful company, ragged and coatless, approaching on foot with arque-. 
buses reversed. On seeing the lieutenant they made no sign, and even when they 
reached him, the knowledge of how they had come to such a pass made them most 
reluctant to speak. From the story which was at last drawn from their unwilling 
lips Sosa learned that, having followed the trail of which Viruega had brought news, 
they had at last reached a pueblo. This they had entered notwithstanding the 
lieutenant’s orders to the contrary, because it was very cold, the ground was 
covered with snow, and they were sadly in need of warmth and shelter, as well as of 
food. The inhabitants had received them kindly, and had given them grain. But 
the next morning while they were strolling through the pueblo without their arms 
which they had left outside in order the better to inspire confidence among the 
Indians, these latter, having suddenly acquired an utterly unexpected and quite 
alarming degree of confidence, gave them the war-cry, and let fly a shower of 
arrows. Taken by surj^rise, the worthy comrades ‘stood not upon the order of their 


♦Hull, 1916, pp. 316-323. 


10 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


going,’ but fled at once and most precipitately to the spot where they had heaped 
lip their arms and other possessions. Here, too, their dusky hosts had been before 
them, so that they were able to escape with only five arquebuses, while the Indians 
carried off the honors of war, together with five arquebuses, eleven swords, the 
saddles and other trappings for the horses, and the clothes and bedding. Indeed, 
they felt themselves fortunate to have escaped with their lives, though even life 
itself, they declared, would have been lost through starvation, had not God in His 
infinite mercy influenced a squaw whom they met on their way to provide them 
with food.” 

“In view of their evident distress, the lieutenant did not inflict on them the 
]mnishment which their disobedience well merited. Rather, he endeavored to 
comfort them and to overcome their discouragement by every possible means.” 

“The Indians remained to be dealt with, and he resolved that, leaving the 
cam]) at a ])lace which he called La Lh-raca (The Alagpie), he himself with an ad¬ 
vance guard of nineteen soldiers and seventeen servants would go to the pueblo to 
secure the lost possessions and to bring the Indians to submission to his majesty.” 

“On the “^hth of December Sosa with this small company left La Urraca, and 
proceeding up the river arrived on the 30th within a league of the pueblo — evi¬ 
dently Cicuye (Pecos) — where the maese cle cainpo and his ])arty had met with 
disaster.” 

“The next morning the lieutenant gave his final orders before entering the 
village. He besought his comrades to advance with confidence, believing that they 
would be kindly received; they had done no harm, so they should fear no evil. 
But they were to carefully follow the example of the lieutenant, and in no way to 
depart from his orders. They marched on to the pueblo with lines in order and 
colors high; but when they reached its environs, they saw all the inhabitants, both 
men and women, in arms upon the roof, prepared to give battle.” 

“The tactics pursued by Castaiio in the face of this crisis are worthy of note. 
The misfortunes of the maese de campo had taught him the value of preparedness. 
Having pitched his camp within gun-range of the pueblo, he planted his two brass 
cannon where they would command the strongest position. Thus prei)ared for all 
contingencies, he sallied forth with the olive branch in his hand.” 

“He spent five hours in making the rounds of the pueblo, addressing the 
])eople with kind words and signs of friendship, and offering them all manner of 
gifts. But in spite of all these friendly overtures, none would come out from their 
breastworks and intrenchments. Rather, they gave the war-cry with increased 
vehemence, and launehed stones and arrows at this unlucky advocate of an armed 
peace. In the end he deemed it expedient to return to his camp and consult with 
his comrades as to the best modus operandi.” 

“They answered with one voice that he should attack these dogs without more 
ado. But Castano was still loath to resort to force, not only from the motives of 
humanity that at all times animated his breast, but for fear of the disapproval of 
the authorities to whom he was responsible.” 

“Having stationed two of his men on a height to see that the natives should 
not withdraw, he once more made a circuit of the pueblo, but only to meet with 


PLATE 3 



a 



l> 

a. View northwest across the Arroyo de Pecos, h, Tlie ruin-mounds from tlie top oi the Churcli. The remains 
of the old defen.se-wall may he seen starting in tlie centre foreground and extending along the right edge of the 
mounds. 










HISTORY OF PECOS 


11 


greater contumely than ever. For not only were the cries which heralded his 
appearance much more derisive, but the stones and arrows fell in a heavier shower; 
and one squaw went out on a balcony and threw ashes on his head. At . . . his 
procedure the shouts of her dusky compatriots reached deafening proportions.” 

“Thereupon the lieutenant returned at once to his camp and ordered his men 
to mount for the attack, and to discharge their arquebuses and the two cannon, to 
try whether by these means they might affright the Indians. This strategem was 
without visible effect, for the defenders of the village only made the more mockery, 
and hurled the more missiles from behind their breastworks, while Castano in vain 
called to them with soothing words.” 

“Now the battle began in earnest. Four men were detailed to ascend with one 
of the cannon to a quarter of the roof devoid of people, while the lieutenant created 
a diversion by attacking the Indians in front. Having made the ascent with 
greatest difficulty because of the desperate resistance offered by the defenders, they 
proceeded to direct their fire against the neighboring quarters. The Indians 
responded with showers of stones and arrows, and bravely stuck to their posts, not 
one showing a sign of fear. The fight waxed hotter. The excitement spread to the 
Indian followers of Sosa. One let fly an arrow; another followed his example. For 
the first time the defenders began to show trepidation. Some began to leave their 
})Osts which the besiegers quickly occupied, mounting by means of ladders, and at 
frightful risk, because their arms had to be abandoned before they could pass 
through the trap-doors that gave access to the roof, swords and shields being after¬ 
wards passed up to them by the comrades who remained below. One after another 
the defenders fell, and the survivors at last fled from the roof, leaving the Spaniards 
in possession of the breastworks.” 

“The victory won, the lieutenant marched in triumph through the streets and 
plazas of the pueblo. And the Indians who were congregated in the wooden cor¬ 
ridors which connected all the houses no longer showed hostility, but rather, all 
made the sign of the cross, indicative of friendship, and cried ^Amigos, amigos, 
amigos!’ They threw down food from the balconies, but they themselves could not 
be induced to come down into the streets, nor to approach the Spaniards, though 
Sosa repeatedly signed to them that he would do them no injury, and they need 
have no fear.” 

“Having found the captain of the pueblo, the lieutenant demanded the restora¬ 
tion of the property taken from the maese cle campo, but was answered that all had 
been either destroyed or taken to other villages save some sword blades without 
guards which he professed himself willing to return. Sosa, however, doubting the 
veracity of the wily Indian, secretly sent some of his soldiers to search the other 
quarters of the pueblo, and if possible to seize some Indian from whom more reliable 
information might be elicited.” 

“IMeantime the captain had mounted to the topmost roof and harangued his 
people in a loud voice. At the conclusion of the speech they showed great joy, and 
evinced great friendship for the Spaniards, but without descending from the bal¬ 
conies to the plaza. And now the lost property was brought out — a pitiful heap 
consisting of two swordblades without guards, a large pouch, some pieces of coarse 


12 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


cloth, and a few other little things. Truly, these seemed little worth the battle! 
But the lieutenant still hoped that his soldiers wonld succeed in finding the rest; a 
vain hope, as it proved, for when he shortly returned to his camp it was only to 
learn of their failure. They had found in the quarter toward which their search was 
directed a veritable labyrinth of mines and coimter-mines extending imder-ground. 
with so many little openings and trap-doors that a thorough investigation was 
impossible at that hour when it was already growing dark.” 

“That night a guard was stationed in the pueblo and all remained qinet. The 
next morning the lieutenant, having thanked his comrades for their faithful service 
and having given orders that no injury should be done either to the ])ersons or the 
projDerty of the conquered Indians, proceeded to ex])lore the pueblo, and to examine 
its contents. It was found to contain five plazas and sixteen kivas, the latter being 
underground chambers, well-plastered, which Sosa believed to have been made for 
protection against the cold. The houses, from four to five stories high, were built in 
the form of cvarteles (garrisons), the entrances all on the outside, and the houses 
standing back to back. They were all connected by wooden corridors or balconies 
which ran from house to house throughout the village. Intersecting streets were 
bridged by wooden beams flung from roof to roof. Access to the houses was had by 
means of small ladders which could afterward be drawn through trap-doors in the 
roof.” 

“Each house was found to eontain a store of grain — the village as a whole 
possessing an immense supply, estimated at thirty thousand fanegas, evidently the 
product of several years’ harvests. The houses also contained a great deal of 
pottery, both gaily colored and figured, and black, some of it glazed.” 

“As it was winter, the people were warmly clothed — the men in mantas of 
cotton and buffalo skins, while some wore also gaily figured trousers. The women 
wore a manta fastened at the shoulder with a wide girdle around the waist, and over 
this another manta, gaily colored, and either embroidered or decorated with furs 
and feathers.” 

“The pueblo had a large amount of land under cultivation, irrigated by two 
running streams at the side, while the pool which su])plied them with water for 
drinking lay within a gunshot. A quarter of a league from the pueblo, the Rio 
Salado flowed.” 

“There can be no doubt that the pueblo thus reached by Sosa on December 31, 
1590, was the pueblo of Cicuye or Pecos. His description tallies in the main, not 
only with that of other explorers, but with modern descriptions of the ruins of 
Pecos.” 

“That night the Indians, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the guard, 
fled from the pueblo. For several days Sosa remained in the vicinity, hoping for 
their return. In the meantime provisions were desi^atched to the rest of the party 
at La Urraca. As it at last became evident that the Indians would not return to 
their pueblo as long as it remained in possession of the Spaniards, the lieutenant 
determined to move on.” 

x4fter exploring the Tehua country and j^enetrating as far north as Taos, 
de Sosa returned to the Cerillos region near Santa Fe, where he was soon after met 


PLATE 4 



a 



l> 

PECOS IX 1846 

a, Church and monastery. I), Northwest corner of [ilaza. (Drawn l>y a member of the American Army of 
Occupation during the Mexican War. After Emory.) 









la 




HISTORY OF PECOS 


13 


by a party sent from Mexico with instructions to arrest him for making unauthor¬ 
ized explorations. The entire expedition was recalled, and the first serious attempt 
at colonization thus met with failure. 

The long-planned settlement of New Mexico was actually brought about in 
1598 by Onate, who established his first town at San Gabriel on the Rio Grande, 
opposite the pueblo of San Juan. Onate was a very vigorous executive and was 
accompanied by a small body of no less energetic priests of the order of Saint 
Francis. The pueblos were quickly and, with the exception of Acoma, peacefully 
brought into subjection, and were parcelled out for religious administration among 
the monks. Fray Francisco de San Miguel was given the Pecos district, but beyond 
the fact that that town was his headquarters and that his parish included a number 
^ of other pueblo^nothing is known* of his pastorate, Onate himself visited Pecos on 
the 24th of July, 1598, and received the submission of its people. Santa Fe was 
founded about 1605. 

Of the events which took place in New Mexico during the first three-quarters 
of the 17th century very little information has come down to us, as all the church 
and civil records of the province were destroyed in the revolution of 1680. The 
“Memorial” of Fray Alonzo de Benavides, however, gives us a glimpse of Pecos at 
about 1620. He says the town “contains more thajlf two thousand souls. Here ^ 
there is a monastery and a very splendid temple of distinguished workmanship and 
beauty, in which a Religious put very great labor and care”.* This, of course, 
proves that the great adobe church had already been built, but the exact date of its 
completion has not yet been established. 

The Pueblo revolt took place in 1680. It was caused partly by dissatisfaction 
with the civil rule of the Spanish, which had been becoming more oppressive year 
by year, but principally, it would seem, by a deep-rooted hatred of Christianity and 
a desire to return to the unhampered practice of the ancient native religion. Trouble 
had evidently been brewing for a long time, and there had been a few minor out¬ 
breaks, but it was not until 1680 that real unanimity among the Pueblos was 
reached under the leadership of one Pope, a medicine-man of San Juan. A care¬ 
fully thought-out plot was hatched; the towns were to rise simultaneously on a 
given day and every Spaniard in the country was to be exterminated. In spite of 
the most elaborate precautions to preserve secrecy, the plans of the Indians leaked 
out at the last moment. But warning came too late to save the Spanish from a 
most terrible disaster, and on the day of the rising, August lOtli, there were killed no 
less than four hundred men, women, and children. Among this number were twenty- 
one priests. Those who escaped the first onslaught fled to the capital at Santa Fe, 
where they were organized for defense by the governor, Oterniin. 

The priest of Pecos, Fray Fernando de Velasco, a veteran of thirty years’ service 
in New Mexico, was warned by Juan Ge, one of his Indian converts, apparently 
during the night of August 9-10. He set out at once to notify his superior, who was 
stationed at Galisteo, a short distance to the west. He crossed the high Pecos mesa, 
traversed the long pine-covered slopes on the other side, and had almost reached 
his destination when he was killed within sight of the pueblo of Galisteo. Whether 

*Ayer, 191C, p. 22 . 


14 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


he was pursued and overtaken by his own parishioners, or intercepted by the Indians 
of Galisteo, is not certain. 

At Santa Fe, Governor Otermin and the other survivors were immediately 
attacked by five hundred warriors from Pecos and the eastern pueblos, shortly 
reinforced by large numbers of Indians from the north. After being besieged for 
five days, and having their water supply cut off, the Spaniards determined to 
abandon the town and attempt a retreat. The Indians fortunately did not oppose 
them, they made their way to the Rio Grande, and eventually succeeded in reaching 
the undisturbed settlements north of where the city of El Paso now stands. The 
victory of the Pueblos was comj^lete; no Spaniard remained in the entire country. 

During the next ten years Otermin and his successor, Cruzate, made several 
ineffectual attempts to reconquer the lost province, but only in 1692, when 
de Vargas had become governor, were any real results obtained. In that year 
de Vargas marched northward, and by tactfid dealing and a strong disjilay of force 
succeeded without bloodshed in receiving the sidnnission of all the pueblos. He did 
not spend the winter, however, and when he returned to resettle the country in 
1693, he found his task a very hard one. For the next few years there was almost 
unceasing w^ar. In spite of the military skill and unflagging energy of de Vargas, 
revolt followed revolt; quelled in one district, trouble would break out in another, 
and it was not until 1700 that New Mexico was once more at peace. 

While the Spanish were absent from New Alexico, the Pecos, Taos, and Keres 
had been at war with the Tanos to the west and the Tehua to the north; the hostility 
of the Pecos, indeed, seems to have been the cause of the abandonment of several of 
the Tano towns. During the period of the reconquest the Pecos gave no trouble. 
They fled from their pueblo when de Vargas arrived in 1692, but were not actively 
hostile; and in 1694 we find their governor, the same Juan Ge who had warned 
Velasco of the impending revolt, accompanying the army and acting as intermediary 
between de Vargas and the Indians of Taos. 

At the beginning of the 18th century Pecos still seems to have held its old 
position as the largest and strongest of the pueblos, but shortly after 1700 there 
began a period of decline that ended only with the final abandonment of the town. 
The chief cause for this was the arrival in the southwestern part of the Great 
Plains of the Comanche, a warlike, predatory tribe that immediately became the 
scourge of eastern New Alexico. The Comanche were always, it would seem, 
particularly hostile to the Pecos, and their raids were a constant source of annoy¬ 
ance and danger. By 1750 the po})ulation had shrunk to one thousand. Apparently 
about this time there occurred a terrible disaster. The Pecos, according to stories still 
current among the Mexicans in the valley, became infuriated by the inroads of the 
Comanche, organized an expedition to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and 
set out with the entire man-power of the ])ueblo. They would appear to have been 
ambushed, for they were utterly cut to ])ieces, only one man escaping. This was 
the death-blow, and when an epidemic of smallpox ravaged the town in 1788, 
but one hundred and eighty survivors were left. These gradually dwindled away, 
attacks of mountain fever became more and more severe, until in 1805 the popula¬ 
tion of the town was reduced to one hundred and four. Gregg in his “Commerce 



Model of the pueblo of Pecos as it appeared about 1700. 







HISTORY OF PECOS 


15 


of the Prairies” gives a graphic picture of the dying pueblo: “This village, 
anciently so renowned, lies twenty-five miles eastward of Santa Fe, and near the 
Rio Pecos, to which it gave name. Even so late as ten years ago, (i.e. about 1830) 
when it contained a population of fifty to a hundred souls, the traveler would often¬ 
times perceive but a solitary Indian, a woman, or a child, standing here and there 
like so many statues upon the roofs of their houses, with their eyes fixed on the 
eastern horizon, or leaning against a wall or a fence, listlessly gazing at the passing 
stranger; while at other times not a soul was to be seen in any direction, and the 
sepulchral silence of the place was only disturbed by the occasional barking of a 
dog, or the cackling of hens.”* 

Finally the people of Jemez, a pueblo akin to them in language, invited the 
remnant of the Pecos to make their home at that place. Accordingly in 1838 the 
seventeen survivors gave up the struggle, made the eighty-mile journey to the 
northwest, and abandoned the crumbling ruins of the dwellings that had housed 
their ancestors for so many centuries. 

The town itself, which was doubtless in a ruinous condition when it was 
abandoned, fell quickly into decay, a process aided by the fact that the Mexicans 
who lived in the vicinity habitually robbed it of beams and timbers for use as fire¬ 
wood. The north building at least kept its form for a few years, as its plaza served 
for a prison to hold the Texans captured by Armijo in 1841.f In 1846 the American 
army passed through Pecos on its way to the capture of Santa Fe, and in his report 
Colonel Emory mentions the town and the church (pi. 4, a ).J One of his pictures 
(pi. 4, b) shows the kiva in the northwest corner of the plaza; the house-walls 
behind it seem to be still standing to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. Since that 
time, however, both the church and the pueblo have suffered greatly. The roof- 
beams of the church were removed about 1860, to be used as corral posts, and its 
adobe walls, unprotected from the rain, have gradually disintegrated. The pueblo 
went to pieces even faster, the upper walls fell, the timbers below rotted away or 
were pulled out, and not until a sheltering mound had formed itself over the lower 
stories was the process of ruin arrested. 


♦Gregg, 1845, vol. I, p. 
tKendall, 1844, vol. i, p. 370. 
JEmory, 1848, p. 30. 


PART TWO 


FIELD WORK AT PECOS 
PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS 

In September 1880, Adolf F. Bandelier visited Pecos and obtained material 
for a report which was published by the Archaeological Institute the following 
year.* Bandelier, with his usual thoroughness and accuracy, described the ruins as 
they were at that time, and included a most valuable series of measurements of the 
house-mounds, the church, and the surrounding defense-wall. He also prepared 
tentative elevations of certain parts of the pueblo, upon which he based estimates 
as to the former size of the buildings and the number of rooms that they contained. 
While his work was not accompanied by excavation, which would, of course, have 
solved many of the problems that puzzled him, Bandelier arrived at remarkably 
accurate conclusions. The traditional and documentary history of Pecos are also 
summarized; but, perhaps the most valuable part of the report consists of 
the information which Bandelier was able to obtain from old residents of the valley, 
particularly from Vlariano Ruiz, a man who in his younger days had been an 
adopted member of the tribe. Ruiz remembered clearly the location of the corrals, 
fields, and gardens of the pueblo; spoke of the govermental organization; and also 
had some knowledge of the religious rites of the people. 

After Bandelier’s work, nothing was done at Pecos for nearly twenty years, but 
in 1904 Dr. E. L. Hewett published a paper dealing with the general problems of 
the archaeology of the valley, and presenting much useful ethnological information 
gathered from the two native Pecos Indians then living at Jeniez.t Hewett dis¬ 
covered that the descendants of the Pecos still visited the ruins of the pueblo, and 
made pilgrimages to a sacred cave somewhere in the vicinity.| 

In 1910, ]Mr. K. AI. Chapman and the writer made a large collection of pot¬ 
sherds at Pecos. We were very much struck by the variety of types represented at 
the site; there being specimens of all the varieties then known in the Rio Grande, 
from the ancient black-on-white to the obviously modern. Accordingly I felt 
certain that here if anywhere could be found the stratified remains which were so 
badly needed to straighten out the chronological problems of the district. Accord¬ 
ingly, when the chance came in 1915 to undertake an extensive piece of excavation, 
I at once recommended Pecos. 

The last work done at the site prior to the beginning of the Phillips Academy 
expeditions, was a survey by Air. J. P. Adams, then with the School of American 

*Bandelier, 1881. 

fHewett, 1904. 

JMexicans resident in the valley state that the Pecos made such pilgrimages for many years, but that they 
discontinued the practice about 1910. In 1915, however, there were found, at a shrine near the pueblo, two carved 
wooden prayersticks. Although these lay in the open, they were so fresh-looking that it seemed as if they could not 
have been deposited more than a year earlier. 


FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


17 


Research at Santa Fe. He and jMr. Chapman spent some time at the ruins and 
gathered data for a large model, a reconstruction of the pueblo and church, which 
was made in 1914, exhibited at the San Diego Exposition of 1915, and later returned 
to the State Museum in Santa Fe. This model is about sixteen feet long, and gives 
an excellent general idea of what the former a])pearance of Pecos must have been 
(pi. 5). 

FIELD WORK OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY 

The Pecos ruins occupy the more or less level top of a long, rocky ridge, which 
stands boldly up above the surrounding land. At the north end this me,nlla pinches 
out to a narrow neck of bare sandstone (pi. 12, a); south of this there is a rise of 
ground and a great widening of the top, but still further south it is again constricted 
and falls away in height until it merges with the nj)lands that stretch off toward the 
river. 

At the extreme southern end lie the ruins of the church and monastery; the 
latter has crumbled to a low mound, but the massive six-foot adobe walls of the 
church have resisted time and vandalism, and still stand, at the transepts, to almost 
their original height (pi. 6). Directly north of the church is a pile of ruins, four 
hundred feet long by sixty-five or seventy feet wide (pi. 7). Again to the north, 
and occupying the highest and broadest part of the mesilla, is an enormous quad¬ 
rangular mound five hundred and fifty feet long by two hundred and fifty wide. 
These two mounds are the remains of pueblo structures which have fallen so com¬ 
pletely into ruin that they appear to be nothing but vast heaps of tumbled stones. 
Closer examination, however, discloses the tops of walls, and here and there the 
protruding ends of wooden beams. The mounds are overgrown with grass and 
cactus. In rainy seasons the wild verbena carpets the ruins with brilliant purple. 

The remains of the defense wall mentioned by Casteneda are still easily trace¬ 
able (pi. 7, and pi. 3, b). It starts and ends at the church, hugging the edge of the 
mesilla and surrounding the entire settlement. Outside the wall the ground falls 
away more or less steeply, the slopes covered with thousands of potsherds and chips 
of flint. 


FArst Season (1915)* 

Work was started on the east side by opening a trench at the foot of the steep 
slope that runs from the plain up to the defense wall (pi. 8, a). It disclosed six 
inches to one foot of loamy dirt containing potsherds, ashes, and animal bones; 
below was undisturbed red clay. The deposit deepened as we worked uphill, its 
surface rising much faster than did the subsoil. When fifty or sixty feet had been 
covered the depth had increased to four feet, and the nature of the earth began to 
change. Hitherto it had been featureless mixed stuff, evidently washed down by 
water from higher up; now ash-lenses and fire-pits appeared, showing that the 
material was still lying as it had originally been deposited. 

*During the first year Dr. and Mrs. S. K. Lothrop acted as a.ssistants; Mr. .1. P. Adams was surveyor, and Mr. 
.J. L. Nussbaum took cliarge of the repairs on the church. 


18 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


Some human bones had been found on the surface, and a few had come from 
the digging. We were most anxious to discover burials; so a reward of twenty-five 
cents was offered to the workmen for every skeleton uncovered. The next day one 
appeared, the following day six; the reward was reduced to ten cents; this brought 
fifteen more, and in the course of a week or so we were forced to discontinue the 
bonus or go into bankruptcy. The higher we got uphill the deeper grew the rubbish 
and the more crowded became the skeletons (pi. 8, b; pl.ll). It was obvious that 
we were digging in the greatest rubbish heap and cemetery that had ever been found 
in the Pueblo region; for we were working below the extreme north end of the north 
building, and the same sort of slope stretched away to the south on the east side 
alone for nearly a fpiarter of a mile. 

Although we were somewhat overwhelmed by the mere mass of this midden, 
the conditions it revealed were exactly what we had been hoping for. Such a depth 
of undisturbed rubbish would be sure to be stratified, the earliest remains at the 
bottom, later ones above them, and so on up, so that by taking samples from the dif¬ 
ferent levels, we should be able to get evidence as to the exact sequence of the 
various types of pottery that had been made at Pecos from the time of its founda¬ 
tion down to the beginning of the 19th century. 

For this reason we gave uj) all ho])e of doing any excavation in the building the 
first year. We confined ourselves to trenching in the rubbish, collecting strati¬ 
graphic material, and uncovering and recording skeletons. Our trench was widened 
to two hundred and fifty feet, and was ])ushed up toward the defense wall. It was 
very slow work, for the earth cpiickly deepened to from ten to twelve feet (pi. 8, b). 
AVe soon saw that at our present rate of ])rogress we could not reach the edge of the 
mesilla before snowfall, and concentrated on three narrow salient trenches to 
explore the deposit ahead and above. 

Two of these salients were delayed by skeletons, but the third got on somewhat 
faster. AA e had believed that the defense wall was built on the edge of the mesilla, 
and that when we arrived at the wall we should encounter a vertical face of rock. 
As a matter of fact we reached the defense wall, with a trench twenty feet deep, but 
no mesa appeared. 

After several weeks’ digging, rendered very slow by the great depth of the 
earth and the j)resence of many skeletons, we found that the whole broad terrace 
between the ruin-mound and the defense wall was made up of nothing but rubbish, 
and that the rock mesa began directly below the edge of the ruin. AYe had learned 
early in the season that the refuse heap was very large, but this latest discovery 
showed that it was probably at least twice as extensive as had then been estimated 
(fig. 1). This was the first of the long series of surj)rises which the Pecos work has 
furnished. Each one has ])roved the site to be vastly larger and more complex 
than had appeared from surface indications. 

The earth which has been referred to as rubbish has played so ini])ortant a 
part in all the excavations at Pecos, that it merits a brief description. It is a dark, 
loamy soil, full of charcoal, streaked with thin layers of ashes, and containing an 
incredible number of potsherds, ehips of flint, animal bones, and broken utensils of 
all sorts. Its dark appearance is due to the high ])ercentage of decayed vegetable 


PLATE 6 



a 



1 ) 

THE PECOS CHURCH (BUILT ABOUT 1()17) 

a. Seen from the ruins of the pnehlo. h, Interior after excavation and tlie reinforcement of tlie foundations 
with concrete. 













FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


19 


matter, ])rincipally corn refuse, which has gone into it; but its largest component, its 
body , so to s})eak, consists of fine wind-blown sand, and of adobe washed from 
the walls and roofs of the houses. The beds of rubbish were repositories for ashes, 
house-sweepings, table-leavings, broken pottery, and discarded implements; they 
served, as well, for the burial of the dead. The custom of interment in rubbish 
heaps is a very general one in the Southwest; it was caused, apjjarently, by no 
disrespect for the departed, but rather by the fact that the heaps offered as a rule 
the only soft earth for grave-digging in a land of bare rocks and hard-packed clays. 

The first season, as has been said, was spent in working the rubbish. In 
comparison to the vast amount of it at the site, the progress, when plotted on the 
map, was not impressive; but the data and specimens secured were highly satis¬ 
factory. The most important results were of course those stratigraphic. 



In various parts of the digging columns of earth had been isolated, marked out 
into horizontal sections, and carefully excavated (pi. 9). The material from each 
cut was kept separate, and shipjjed in to the Museum for study. When it was 
cleaned and examined it was found that the commonest, most easily classifiable, 
and obviously most significant specimens were the fragments of pottery. Work on 
these potsherds showed that there had been a steady and uninterrupted growth in 
the ceramic art of Pecos from the days of its founding down to the period of its 
abandonment in 1838. It was possible to establish eight major pottery types (see 
pis. 39, 40),* and to determine their exact chronological sequence, thus confirming 
and in many ways amjjlifying similar results then being obtained by Nelson at the 
ruins of the Galisteo basin a few miles to the west.f 

We must here consider briefly the ap]:)lication of such stratigraphic data. 
In the Rio Grande, as in other parts of the Southwest, there are great numbers of 
prehistoric ruins. Some of these contain one type of pottery, some another, still 
others show two or more types. It had been inferred that these differences in 
ceramics represented differences in age, but there was no sure method for arranging 
the types in their proper chronological order, though such an arrangement was of 
course necessary as a first step toward a study of the history of the region. With 
the discovery of the stratified deposits at the Galisteo basin ruins and at Pecos we 
were at once provided with a key to the whole problem; for they disclosed, as has 

*The eight types are provisionally named as follows: Black-on-\vhite, Glaze 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Modern. For 
description see Kidder, M. A. and A. V., 1917. 
t Nelson, 1916. 








S O U T H W E S T E R X A R H A E O L O G Y 


20 

been explained, an orderly superposition of all these types, the oldest naturally 
lying at the bottom, later ones above, and the latest at the top. With the sequence 
of the pottery types thus established, it becomes a perfectly simple matter to 
arrange all sites containing one or more of them in their true chronological order. 
The same principle is also used in the local work at Pecos: graves, for example, with 
offerings of Type 3 pottery must be older than graves containing Type 4; rooms 
filled with Ty])e 6 rubbish must have been abandoned after rooms filled with refuse 
of Type 5, etc. 

During the trenching of 1915 two hundred skeletons were found.* These 
lay in the rubbish at all levels from just under the grass-roots (pi. 10, a) to as deep 
as twenty and twenty-one feet (pi. 9, b). Their general position in regard to the 
stratigraphic horizons served to date them relatively to each other; many of them, 
also, were accompanied by mortuary offerings of pottery, which allowed us to fix 
their chronological position with even greater accuracy. Although a considerable 
percentage of the skeletons were in very bad condition, it was possible by careful 
work to save a large number of them. 

The specimens, aside from potsherds and human and animal bones, numbered 
about three thousand; they included pottery vessels, effigies, pipes; objects of stone 
such as arrowheads, scrapers, knives and drills; bone and antler tools in great 
abundance; and much miscellaneous material in the way of ornaments, fetishes, 
objects of European manufacture, etc. 

Second Se.\son (1916)t 

During the winter of 1915-16 much time was spent in studying the pottery 
recovered in the stratigraphic tests. It was found that the early types were very 
l^oorly represented, and that the later types, which there was no reason to su])pose 
had been made for any greater length of time than the early ones, were present in 
disproportionately large quantities. It was decided that this was due to the fact 
that our tests had been made too far downhill and that the thickest deposits of 
early material must lie at the base of the heavy rubbish close against the mesa. 
For this reason it was felt that several deep tests must be made. One gang of men, 
accordingly, was kept testing in the main east diggings all summer, and the rest were 
used in an attempt to run out the extent of the other rubbish deposits that were 
thought to surround the pueblo. 

Narrow exploratory trenches were cut at intervals of 100 feet or so all along the 
east slope, and ])its were sunk on the terrace east of the north building. These 
showed that the rubbish heaps extend over these entire areas, but that they are in 
most places not as deep as they are below the north building. 

Trenches were next opened on the west sloi)es. Here there was found to have 
been little or no dumpage, a condition undoubtedly due to the strong west winds 

*Exclusive of about one hundred and fifty burials that came to light during Mr. Nussbaum’s repair work on the 
church. A great mass of skeletal material of the historic period still awaits excavation in and near the mission. 

fin this year Dr. C. E. Guthe acted as a.ssistant, and Mrs. Kidder took charge of the cleaning and sorting of the 
thousands of potsherds recovered. 


PLATE 7 



0 














FIELD W O R K AT PECOS 


21 


which prevail in the Pecos valley, and which would naturally have induced the 
people to throw their refuse to leeward over the east side. 

There now remained to be investigated an area that we called in our field 
notes the “North Terrace”, a smooth, gently sloping surface running from where 
the defense wall cuts across the narrowing neck of the 7nesilla up to what appeared 
to be the foundations of the north wall of the main north quadrangle (pi.7; pi. 12, a). 
Here there were no signs whatever of house structures except a single low mound, 
and the place seemed to contain nothing but shallow rubbish and material washed 
down from the decaying pueblo. 

We now received our second annual surprise. The first day’s work disclosed 
house-walls; we followed them up, and eventually laid bare, in this innocent-looking 
place, forty rooms, a kiva, and no less than two hundred burials. Although the 
actual digging ])rogressed in the opposite direction, it will be simpler to describe the 
buildings from north to south. 

Just within the defense wall, but obviously erected at a very much earlier 
time, was found a series of chambers, whose walls stood only about eighteen inches 
high (pis. 1, b; 12, a). These ancient foundations date from the period of the first 
occupation of the Pecos mesa, a fact that was proved by the finding piled against 
them, of rubbish containing only black-on-white pottery, the type shown by strati¬ 
graphy" to be the oldest of all. This dwelling, which we may for convenience call 
the Black-on-white house, extended from the western edge of the mesa across to the 
eastern; it there turned south and traces of it could be made out here and there 
under later structures. 

Near the northwestern end of the main quadrangle was found a large 
Black-on-white rubbish heap and cemetery, so that we were led to suspect that the 
Black-on-white houses turned somewhere near the northeast corner and ran out to 
the western edge of the mesa, thus forming a three-sided pueblo open to the west 
and partly surrounding a large courtyard or plaza. 

Debris of the Black-on-white period is scanty or even absent at the bottom of 
most parts of the rubbish deposits along the rest of the Pecos mesa; it is, however, 
comparatively heavy below the North Terrace, on both east and west sides. I 
believe, accordingly, that on the North Terrace lay the nucleus of the Pecos pueblo. 
As to the date of its founding or the length of its occupation we can say little or 
nothing as yet, but from the fact that at Rowe, and across the Arroyo de Pecos at 
“Bandelier Bend” and at “Loma Lothrop”, there are ruins of what were larger and, 
in some respects, apparently earlier Black-on-white villages, we can hazard the 
guess that this mesa settlement was erected toward the close of the Black-on-white 
period and not long before the beginning of the next, or Glaze 1, stage. At all events 
the northern wing of the oldest pueblo was abandoned and presumably in ruins 
during Glaze 1 times, for skeletons accompanied by Glaze 1 pottery were found 
buried above the floor levels in several of its rooms (fig. 2). 

The bulk of the Glaze 1 pueblo seems to have been to the south, where it still 
lies unexcavated below the mass of the great quadrangle; its approximate position 
may nevertheless be guessed at from the quantities of Glaze 1 rubbish that cumber 
the* eastern mesa slopes below the quadrangle, and which are also heaped along the 


sou T H W E S T E R X A R (’ H A E O L O G Y 

southern part of the North Terrace itself. Tlie eastern wing of the old pueblo may 
have been used, however, to some extent, for there are evidences of repair and 
rehabilitation of many walls. Whether this was done at the very close of Black-on- 
white times or during the Glaze 1 stage could not be determined, but in either case 
the east wing lay abandoned, and probably ]3artly covered up, through the whole 
long stretch of the next periods: Glaze '2, 3, and 4. Ihis is proved by the presence 
of burials of these epochs in its rooms and actually above some of its broken-down 
walls, while the courtyard, usually kept free of rubbish in an inhabited pueblo, is 
choked with Glaze 3 and 4 debris and burials (fig. 2). 



Fig. 2. Cross-section showing superposition of walls, burials, etc., on the North Terrace at Pecos. 


We must infer, then, that during these periods the Pecos pueblo was extending 
itself to the south, and that the great quadrangle, and perhaps also the long, narrow 
south house, were gradually assuming their final form. Not until this growth was 
completed, or at least well under way, did the inhabitants turn again to the North 
Terrace, the neglected site of what we suppose to have been their earliest homes. 
Here, in the Glaze 5 period, which began apparently some time before the Conquest 
and lasted until nearly 1680, were ])resumably built and surely used the rooms of 
the south wing near the main north wall. The floors of these lie well above rubbish 
of earlier times, and they themselves contained on excavation nothing but Glaze 5 
pottery. There seems also to have been at this time some repair of the central 
apartments of the east series, and a long wall, probably a defensive structure and 
perhaps the forerunner of the later defense wall, was run out across the long-buried 
rooms of the north series. 

The Glaze 5 period appears to have been the Augustan Age, so to speak, of the 
town, for the houses then reached their maximum size and the layers of Glaze 5 


















PLAl'E 8 



a 



1 ) 



c 

THE EASTERN' TREXrnp:S IX THE CJREAT PFX'OS Rl'BBISH HEAP. 

a, Tlie opening cut. June, 191.5. h, Trencli at ten feet deep, e, IVeneli at nineteen feet (leej). 

















FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


23 


debris are the heaviest of all. Towards its close the pueblo began to draw in on 
itself again, the south wing rooms were deliberately filled up with stone and served 
as the foundation for the last addition to the heavy outside wall of the historic 
quadrangle. In this drawing in and strengthening we may perhaps see the effects 
of the ever-increasing menace of the Comanche raids. Even then the old north 
building was not entirely deserted, for the little group of rooms in the middle of the 
eastern wing was used well into the historic period, as is shown by the finding in 
them of crockery of Spanish make, bones of domestic animals, and copper imple¬ 
ments. The rooms served as a sort of cook-house annex and contained many 
manos and metates for corn grinding, while all about them are the remains of ovens 
sunk through the Glaze 5 rubbish. 

In the final dreary years, when the handful of survivors lived huddled together 
in the few still habitable rooms of the quadrangle, the old north house was evidently 
given over to decay, for its mound contains none of the latest pottery at all. On its 
surface, however, we found lying broken a fine large water jar of the very last 
period, forgotten perhaps, or perhaps deliberately abandoned, by the last of the 
Pecos when they set out on their final migration to the homes of their kindred at 
Jemez. 

I have gone into detail in describing the conditions that we encountered on the 
North Terrace, in order that the reader may appreciate the problems by which we 
were faced at the close of the 1916 season. We had expected to find on the mesa 
top the remains of a single large pueblo showing, perhaps, signs of repair and re¬ 
building, but founded on the rock and permitting the easy examination of its walls 
from top to bottom. Instead of this it had developed that the historic town was 
erected on the broken and tumbled walls of earlier houses, and that these again had 
been built over at least two still more ancient ones. 

Such conditions were, of course, exceedingly favorable for the recovery of data 
on the growth of the pueblo, and might also be expected to disclose many important 
facts as to changes in architecture, house-grouping, etc., at different periods. But 
they would undoubtedly render the task of excavation infinitely slower and more 
expensive; and would necessitate the development of entirely new methods of 
recording. Futhermore, our original plans for repairing the walls of excavated 
rooms and leaving the pueblo open for inspection by visitors, had definitely to be 
abandoned. In the first place, to get at and study the older buried structures it 
would often be necessary to remove parts of walls which lay above them; and, 
secondly, the old broken-down early houses formed so irregular and unsteady a 
foundation that the upper walls were in a most precarious condition. Made of 
crude and badly laid masonry (pi. 13, a), uncoursed, with unbroken joints and with 
the corners not tied by binding stones, such walls would be hard to save intact even 
if built on solid, level rock; founded as they were on disintegrated walls of the 
same type as themselves, they had become, especially since the rotting away of their 
roof-beams, so shaky that, the supporting debris once removed, they fell almost of 
their own weight. 

To sum up the work of the season. The eastern rubbish heap was tested and 
found to run the entire length of the menUa; the western slope under the north 


24 > 


S O U r H W E S T E R N A R (’ H A E O L O G Y 


})iiilding was shown to be ])ractically barren of archaeological deposits; and the 
North Terrace was almost completely excavated, disclosing a very old ruin and, 
overlying it and running off under the main north quadrangle, the remains of 
several other prehistoric structures. Three large stratigraphic tests were carried 
out in the deepest rubbish obtainable, and several others were taken in places where 
it was desired to examine certain strata in detail. In the course of the digging 
four hundred and seventy-five skeletons were encountered, the most important of 
these belonging to the Black-on-white period. 

Third Season (1917) 

In this year no excavations were attempted at the main Pecos ruin, but a 
number of other ])ieces of work were carried out. I was able, before entering the 
army, to devote a few weeks to the exploration of the Hopi country in northeastern 
Arizona, and to locate a site, the ruined pueblo of Awatobi, which resembled Pecos 
in that its occujiancy embraced both the prehistoric and historic ])eriods. Distinct 
evidences of stratification were noted. Such a site was desirable in order to provide 
data from a more or less distant region, to use for checking against the Pecos finds. 

Dr. Guthe ex|)lored the sites along the Pecos river below Pecos, as well as those 
in the Gallinas drainage to the west. He then investigated many ruins on the upper 
Rio (jrande, and finally ran out the northern limits of Pueblo culture in that direc¬ 
tion by following it to its vanishing jioint in the San Luis valley of southern Colorado. 
Returning to Pecos he excavated for six weeks in the ruin at Rowe. 

Rowe pueblo lies about four miles south of Pecos. It is a very large ruin which 
was occupied only during Black-on-white times, a period not extensively repre¬ 
sented at Pecos, but a most important one in the history of the Rio (irande. The 
Black-on-white remains at Pecos are not only relatively scanty, but are also much 
confused by having been overlaid by, and somewhat mixed with, deposits of later 
ejiochs. Hence it was very desirable to collect unmixed data from a pure Black-on- 
white site. The excavation of Rowe supplied an abundance of such material, 
clearly illustrating the later phases of the Black-on-white period. The work was 
far from simjile, as there had been several rebuildings accompanied by slight changes 
in culture. The masonry of Rowe is infinitely siqierior to that of Pecos.* 

Fourth Season (19‘2())t 

From the autumn of 1917 until July 1919, the Pecos work was at a standstill, 
and by the time the various loose ends were gathered together, uncatalogued 
collections arranged, and maps brought up to date, it was too late to take the field. 
The winter of 1919-''20 was spent, accordingly, in studying the specimens already on 
hand. At this time it was arranged that all skeletal material from Pecos should be 
turned over to the Peabody Aluseum of Harvard University, and that Dr. E. A. 
Hooton, Curator of Physical Anthropology in that institution, should undertake the 

*For a preliminary account of the Rowe excavation, see Guthe, 1917. 

fDr. Guthe acted as assistant. Dr. Hooton superintended the cemetery work, Mrs. Kidder did the cataloguing 
and handled the pot.sherds. 




I 

I 

i 

I 


A STKATIGIiAPHIC SECTION' IN THE DEEP HUDHISH 

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33 


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PLATE 10 





a 



b 



' V 

v*> 


c 

TYPICAL BURIALS 

a. Extended burial of late period; note shallowness of grave, b. Partly flexed burial of Glaze 4 period; mortuary 
bowl broken and the pieces scattered over the body at the time of interment, c, Closely flexed burial on face, 
Glaze 3 period; mortuary bowl unbroken. 






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if. ^ ‘V*-/ 





1 


FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


25 

study of it. The skeletons already recovered numbered nearly seven hundred, 
future excavations were certain to j^rodiice many more, and, as the collection 
promised to be of great im})ortance, it was desirable to have it in the hands of a 
competent authority. W hen we took the field in the summer of 1920, Dr. Hooton 
accompanied us in order to learn the conditions under which the material was found, 
and also to assist in developing more perfect methods of caring for it. 

Advantage was taken of Dr. Hooton’s presence in the field to run a number of 
new trenches in the refuse-heap cemeteries on the east slope. Exploration of the 
west sloj)e south of the main quadrangle also disclosed a new cemetery of very 
large pro})ortions. 'What we have come to call the “annual surprise” was, for 1920, 
the fact that the u])per terrace lying west of the main quadrangle was full of graves, 
and that ])art at least of the plaza of the main quadrangle itself was crammed with 
skeletons, which also ran under the ruins of the later houses. 

The greater ])art of the summer was devoted to excavations in the pueblo 
itself. Rooms were cleared in both north and south buildings. 

The South House work was undertaken with the idea of finding out whether or 
not that structure dated from prehistoric times. Castaneda, in his description of 
Pecos, mentions but one pueblo, a large quadrangle which is obviously the North 
House. That so large a building as the South House should have been overlooked, 
did not seem likely if it was inhabited at that time. It was thought that it 
might either have been in ruins in 1.541, or perhaps have been built after that date. 
Excavation proved that both theories were correct, for when the rooms were clearetl 
to bedrock, it was found that there had indeed been an early pueblo on the site, but 
that it had been abandoned and reduced to a mere heap of ruins long before the 
coming of the Spaniards. Some time during the late Kith or early 17th centuries, 
however, a new pueblo was constructed on the same ground. In its rooms were 
found many objects of European manufacture, such as bits of china, iron and copper 
implements. In the interior of the mound one ground-floor chamber was un¬ 
covered in excellent ])reservation. Its roof was mostly intact, and from the beams 
still hung the bark loops that had been used to suspend the goods of the owners; on 
one smoke-blackened log were a series of hand-prints, large and small, slapped on in 
whitewash. 

In the North House the excavations were more extensive. The great mound 
formed by the ruin of this building is quadrangular, and encloses a large level plaza, 
to which entrance is gained by four gaps in the high-piled ruins. These gaps un¬ 
doubtedly re])resent the former presence of passageways giving access to the court. 

To explore the mound and the plaza, trenches were started simultaneously at 
the east entrance and at the west edge of the mesa, so as to cross-cut the entire 
northern end of the site and meet in the plaza. 

The western trench was begun about eighty-five feet from the ruin proper and, 
like all trenches at Pecos, was run in along bedrock. It was thought that the deposit 
at this point would be shallow. Rubbish, however, was found at once, quickly 
deepened to four feet, and contained a number of skeletons of the Glaze 3 period. 
After ])assing through this zone of burials, there were encountered the foundation 
walls of an early building, the presence of which had not been suspected. This was 


26 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


cut through, and the trench continued toward the main mound, only to strike 
almost immediately a sharp dip in the bedrock. Sinking on the dip we found that 
we were in a large oval pit filled with rubbishy earth. On complete excavation, 
which required nearly a week, it proved to be a masonry-lined cistern, fifteen feet 
deep, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long, built in a natural crevice of the mesa. 
About its edge was a neatly made coping-wall two feet high. The date of the 
building of the cistern could not then be determined, but it had been abandoned 
during the Glaze 4 ])eriod, and at that time filled full of rubbish. This was a 
particularly valuable deposit, as it was very rich in potsherds and cast-off imple¬ 
ments, and gave us an unusually full and unmixed collection. 

When the cistern was cleared it was bridged over and the trench was continued. 
Another zone of skeletons was at once encountered, part of a large Black-on-white 
and Glaze 1 cemetery that seems to run all along the western side of the main ruin. 
Some very fine pottery was taken from these graves. 

About fifteen feet west of the high mound we began to meet low walls built on 
bedrock and not extending to the surface. Resisting the temptation to follow these 
north and south, we cut through them, and trenched directly into the main ruin. 
Here we found a most complex state of affairs; a jumble of early walls, some fallen, 
others partly incorporated into the bases of later structures (pi. 14). The later 
houses stood about half way to the tops of their second stories, but they were in 
exceedingly bad condition in consequence of their poor masonry and of the fact that 
they had been founded on irregularly broken-down earlier walls. 

It had been planned to cut the trench straight across to the plaza, but about 
half way through the mound we uncovered a room with such a finely preserved roof 
that we were afraid to excavate close about it and thereby weaken its walls. Ac¬ 
cordingly we were forced to change direction to the south in order to pass around it. 
This proved to be a very fortunate circumstance, as it led us into a series of rooms 
that were most prolific in specimens. 

The majority of rooms in a pueblo which, like Pecos, was abandoned slowly, 
were left empty, as the people naturally took away all their belongings with them. 
The rooms, however, that we now came into proved to have been the scene of a bad 
accident at some time in the historic period subsequent to 1680. The entire outer 
wall of the pueblo had evidently suddenly given way and fallen inward, crushing 
the rooms to the east of it and burying them with their entire contents under tons of 
stone (pi. 13, b). No attempt had been made to clear out and refit this section. 
That the people had some warning of the catastrophe is probable, as there were no 
skeletons in the debris. 

Our finds here were very rich, including a large series of cooking jars, some 
modern painted ollas and a vessel from Zuni; all these, of course, were badly broken; 
but, queerly enough, we found one nest of small ceremonial pots wedged in among 
the rocks and quite undamaged. With these were many handsome shell ornaments, 
two sets of bone flutes, two very large tobacco pipes, one of them elaborately 
carved, thirty-five buffalo horns, part of a wooden dance headdress, and many 
other specimens. 


PLATE 11 



a 



1 > 

SKELETONS l.\ THE DEEP RUBBISH 

The crowded condition of burials in certain areas greatly delays excavation, as each grave requires from one 
to three hours careful work. 













FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


27 


At this ])oint the western trench encountered the eustern, which had been 
slowly worked in across the plaza to meet it. The initial ])rogress of the east trench 
had been rapid, as it was run into the courtyard through an old entryway. Once in 
the plaza, however, it was as fruitful of labor-making surprises as was the west 
trench. Instead of a deposit of two to three feet, as had been expected, there was 
found an average of five feet of very hard-packed fill. Directly in the path of the 
cut were encountered the long walls of an old ])ueblo and just beyond were two large 
underground ceremonial chambers, or kivas. Both kivas had been built during the 
early occupancy of the Pecos mesa, but one of them was soon abandoned and 
afterwards served as a burial })lace, fifteen skeletons being found between its floor 
and the surface of the plaza. The other was kept in u.se until after the conquest, 
undergoing during the many centuries of its history a number of architectural 
changes. In a sealed recess in the wall of this kiva was found a small granite idol, 
the only object of its kind that had so far come to light at Pecos and the fourth ever 
found in New Alexico. 

In addition to the two trenches just described, which cross-cut the North 
Building, a series of rooms about the east entrance was excavated. By very careful 
observation of the stratified fillings in the lower jjarts of these rooms, coordinated 
with an intensive study of the successive increments of masonry that had gone into 
their construction. Dr. Guthe was able to work out and record by plans and eleva¬ 
tions the exact history of the growth of this section of the pueblo from the founda¬ 
tion of the town down to the time of its final abandonment. The methods of 
observation and recording developed by Dr. Guthe in this ])iece of work form a 
distinct addition to archaeological field technique. 

The collection of specimens was large and contained many unique objects, and 
the result of the summer’s work on the history of the pueblo and the development 
of its arts were highly satisfactory. The year’s excavations in the North House, 
however, confirmed our worst fears as to the condition of the building itself. The 
ruin is in poorer condition than any other pueblo structure that I have seen. The 
walls of the late rooms stand to heights varying from ten to fifteen feet, but they are 
of such wretchedly bad masonry, are laid on such insecure foundations, and have 
been so thoroughly shattered by the falling of their upper stories, that to remove the 
filling of earth that holds them upright, means to bring about their almost certain 
collapse. In the few rooms cleared in 1920, we were obliged to ]>ull down a number 
of tottering walls to avoid imminent danger to our workmen. 

Fifth Season (1921) 

During the excavations at Pecos, and particularly from the laboratory work 
on the material recovered, it had become increasingly evident that the surest 
archaeological results were to be derived from the study of pottery. We were 
constantly being called u])on to classify wares, make comparisons, aiul form judg¬ 
ments as to the relations between different ceramic groups. We found that in doing 
this we were severely handicapped by a lack of jirecise knowledge as to the tech¬ 
nology of Puelilo pottery, a lack which could not be siqiidied by any printed work. 


-28 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


Accordingly, when I found in the sjjring of 1921, that I should be unable to excavate 
at Pecos that summer. Dr. Giithe went to New Alexico, to make a thorough study 
of pottery-making as it is practiced among the Pueblo Indians of today. 

He chose for his investigation the Tewa pueblo of San Ildefonso, a village on 
the Rio Grande north of Santa Fe, whose women have for years been recognized as 
the most skillfid and versatile potters of that region. During the weeks that Dr. 
Giithe spent at San Ildefonso, he recorded every step in the manufacture of pottery, 
from the digging of the clays to the firing of the completed vessels. His remarkably 
complete and detailed results will be published in the near future. 

A second investigation bearing closely on the problems of Pecos, was also 
inaugurated in the summer of 1921. This was^he study of the ethnology of the 
pueblo of Jemez. 

The Jemez and Pecos were closely allied linguistically and their common dialect 
was not spoken at any other town. Hence, when Pecos was abandoned, the sur¬ 
viving members of the tribe naturally went to live with the Jemez. There they have 
gradually increased, until today there is a considerable group of ]Deople of more or 
less pure Pecos descent. 

Since the beginning of the Pecos work it had been realized that the investiga¬ 
tion could not be considered complete until an attempt had been made to recover 
from the descendants of the Pecos at Jemez whatever knowledge they still had of 
their former home and of the life which their ancestors lived there. It was also 
most desirable to learn something of the ethnology of one of the modern Rio Grande 
pueblos, for as to the social and religious organization of those towns we really 
know very little. Such studies could hardly fail to throw light on many of the 
problems raised by the Pecos excavations. No member of the expedition staff was 
qualified to undertake this work, and no opportunity to have it done by anyone 
else presented itself until Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons decided to include Jemez in the 
intensive ethnological survey which she had been carrying on at the villages further 
west. She spent the seasons of 1921 and 1922 at that pueblo, where, in spite of 
great difficulties due to the conservatism and secretiveness of the people, she has 
collected a mass of most interesting and important data. Dr. Parsons has gen¬ 
erously allowed us to publish the results of her work in the Pecos series. 

Sixth Season (1922)* 

The excavation of the main quadrangle was continued north from the narrow 
cross-cut trench of 1920, particular attention being devoted to architecture, town 
growth, and the stratigra])hy of the beds of early rubbish adjoining the building on 
the west side. In the course of the latter work an extensive ruin was developed on 
the West Terrace where enough of it was cleared to show that it dated from Glaze 1 
times, and that its main axis ran north and south; but whether it was a simple 
structure or whether it was quadrangular like the historic pueblo, has not yet been 
determined. 

*Diiring this summer I was assisted in the field by Miss Ida Sanford and iSIessrs. G. C. Vaillant and S. P 
Moorehead. Mrs. Kidder as usual handled the sorting of potsherds. 


PLATE 1^ 
















a 



b 

NORTH TERRACE EXCA\'ATIONS 

a. From the top of the main ruin-mound; the remains of the oldest settlement lie just within the later defense- 
wall; from the trenches here visible there were taken over ninety skeletons, b, The main ruin-mound seen from 
the north. 
















FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


29 


As a preliminary to the work on the main quadrangle the inner wall of the 
building was cleared to its foundations all about the north half of the plaza; this 
served to remove a great deal of loose stone fallen from the ruined upper walls of the 
houses and to define the exact limits of the courtyard. Such digging was naturally 
very unproductive of specimens. The first series of rooms, fronting on the plaza, 
was then attacked, and here we at once encountered conditions so typical of the 
whole summer’s excavations that it seems worth while to describe part of that work 
in detail. 

Room 39 was the first chamber entered. Under the ])ile of fallen rock which 
covered it was found a well preserved roof. The main beams, round poles of 
yellow pine six to eight inches in diameter, supported a ceiling of split cedar, twigs, 
and adobe. Tucked in among the roofing were an oak digging-stick and two wooden 
arrows, placed there for safe-keeping, and forgotten or abandoned when the owners 
left. Below the ceiling the upper part of the room was choked with earth, finely 
stratified, entirely barren of specimens and evidently washed in by rainwater 
seeping down the walls. Under this, and extending to the adobe floor, was a mass of 
rubbish two to three feet thick which showed that the room must have been used for 
a long time as a dumping place; the debris consisted of corn-husks, cobs, and stems, 
chips of wood, broken and discarded wooden implements and great quantites of 
animal bones. Remains of sheep and horses as well as fragments of late types of 
pottery proved the deposit to have been made in post-Spanish times. 

In most Rio Grande pueblos when one reaches the floor of a room one’s work is 
over, but at Pecos it is never safe to abandon excavations until bed-rock is encoun¬ 
tered. In Room 39 a trial pit in one corner showed that there was soft earth below; 
so digging was continued and was almost immediately rewarded by the finding of a 
large polished black olla, the mouth covered by a stone slab. This had been hidden 
under the floor, and contained a pair of turtle-shells perforated for suspension, like 
those worn by the Santo Domingo corn dancers, and two rattles made of small 
gourds. Near this was a second jar, also with a lid, but this one, to our great disap¬ 
pointment, was empty. 

While we were clearing away the earth about these vessels we encountered 
human bones, and after careful brushing found that there were two skeletons 
buried face-down in the deposit of dark soil that directly underlay the cached pots. 
Work from this point downward was very difficult; the light, which came in from a 
small hole in the roof, was poor, the space uncomfortably cramped, and the bones 
of the skeletons so badly decayed that the greatest care had to be exercised in 
cleaning them. The buried individuals proved to be two females, each one with a 
Glaze 3 bowl inverted over the head. The particular interest of these two skeletons 
lay in the fact that the head of one of them extended under the foundation of the 
east wall of the room, whereas the earth in which the burial was made had evidently 
accumulated against the much deeper west wall. This showed that the first, or 
easternmost, series of rooms along the plaza had been added to the building at some 
time subsequent to the Glaze 3 period, but that the rear rooms had been built at a 
date enough earlier to allow the growth of a considerable depth of rubbish against 
them. 


30 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


How deep the rubbish ran was not ascertained until we had sunk three feet 
further, taken out three Glaze 1 skeletons, and eventually reached the solid sand¬ 
stone of the mesa. Even here the work was not quite finished, for in the cracks of 
the rock were pockets of very early debris, and tucked away in one of them a 
much rotted skeleton, identified by its accompanying bowl as belonging to the very 
first period of occupation, the Black-on-white. 

By the time all these remains had been cleared, noted, and removed, and their 
])ositions recorded on the plan and the cross-seCtion map of the room, we had 
reached a depth, under the roof beams, of between eight and nine feet. The wall 
on the west side was decidedly shaky, that on the east had been undermined in 
taking out the Glaze 3 skeletons, and we were very glad to be able to get out of the 
deep, narrow, badly lighted hole. 

The room just described was typical of the whole east, or plaza-fronting, series, 
and from each one we took a number of skeletons, ranging in age from Black-on- 
white down to Glaze 4 times. The most interesting find in these rooms was made i n 
a chamber a few feet south of Number 39. Here, in a cist or bin built partly of 
masonry and partly of slabs, was a fine sandstone idol surrounded by a collection of 
jneces of petrified wood, odd-shaped stones, and concretions. 

The next rooms to be excavated were those lying to the west, and here the 
conditions were somewhat simpler, as these chambers for the most part had been 
founded directly on the rock in early times, and kept in use, and accordingly clear of 
debris, until the abandonment of the town. Alany specimens were found in them, 
and much was learned from the remains of roofs, fireplaces, and mealing outfits, as 
to the height of the original structure and the uses of the different rooms. To 
summarize, it may be said that Casteneda’s description of the town in 1540 was 
verified in almost every particidar, namely, that the building was terraced up from 
the plaza to a height at the rear of four stories, that there were balconies at the 
second and third stories, and that the rooms on the ground floor were without door¬ 
ways, access to the roofs and balconies having been gained by means of ladders. 

During the season’s work the entire northwest corner of the building was 
cleared, and several trenches were run in the rubbish-heaps to the west. About two 
hundred and fifty skeletons were uncovered, most of them of early periods. The 
most notable specimens found were the idol above mentioned, a fine series of 
tobacco pipes from a ceremonial room at the north end of the i)ueblo; and a large 
stone slab from the jilaza, upon which is painted in many colors a representation of 
a masked head, probably a rain-god or kachina. The latter is, as far as the writer 
knows, the only painting of its kind which has ever been found in the Southwest. 

Toward the end of the summer a few days were spent at a large but incon¬ 
spicuous site at “Bandelier Bend” just across the Arroyo de Pecos from the main 
ruin. Enough was done to get an idea of the nature of the ])ottery and to determine 
that the buildings had been low, rambling structures made of adobe. The study of 
the pottery showed that “Bandelier Bend” was an ancient settlement founded, 
apparently, quite early in the Pueblo period, and inhabited for a long time. During 
its occupancy it seems to have grown by accretion from a small community to a very 
extensive one. It was abandoned at about the time when Pecos was founded, 


PLATE 13 



a 



b 

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS 

a. Typical Pecos masonry, not coursed and made of untrimmed stones; a sealed doorway appears in the centre 
of the picture, b. Conditions in the rooms of the Great Quadrangle; the badly-built lower walls have given way 
and the upper stones have fallen, crushing the roof-timbers. 












FIELD WORK A T P EGOS 


31 


which makes it seem likely that its people merely moved across the arroyo to the 
more easily defended site on the Pecos mesa. The most interesting feature of onr 
preliminary excavations was the finding of a round subterranean kiva, the oldest 
example of such a structure so far reported from the Rio Cirande. 

Summary of Results 


Let us briefly sum up the results of the field-work so far completed. To 
begin with, we have found that the Peeos site is much more extensive and 
vastly more complicated than had been expected. The main building-mounds, 
those of the North and South Houses, instead of being the remains of dwellings 
ereeted af an early date and kept in use until the abandonment of the pueblo, have 
been shown to be comparatively late struetures which overlie the broken-down 
walls of several still earlier towns. Where the earth on the mesa-top and along the 
terraces had been supposed to be a mere skin, it has turned out to be anywhere 
from five to twenty feet deep, and to cover nnsuspected house-ruins and cemeteries. 
The extent of the rubbish-heai)s along the east and southwest slopes, has hardly yet 
been gauged. All these facts indicate, of course, a long period of occupancy, a 
condition which we had suspeeted from surfaee signs, but which we had not been 
able to prove before excavations began. It is now certain, therefore, that the 
rubbish-heaps of Pecos contain the accumulations of several centuries at least; and 
many of them are so stratified that by careful study of their contents we have been 
able to trace the develo])ment of the arts and industries of the community from 
beginning to end. Of the various objects found in these stratified heaps, pottery 
fragments are by far the commonest and most easily classifiable. Hence we have 
devoted much time, both in the field and in the laboratory, to the study of pottery, 
and have worked out in considerable detail the changes which have taken place in 
that art from the unknown date at which Pecos was founded to the early years 
of the last century. 

As originally jilanned, the work of the Pecos exj^edition was to be first intensive, 
then extensive. The intensive phase was to consist of the excavation of the pueblo, 
and the determination by stratigraphic methods of the sequence of the pottery 
types found at the site. During the second or extensive phase we were to use our 
knowledge of the sequence of the ])ottery types to arrange in their proper chrono¬ 
logical order all other ruins which contained those types. This work was to be 
accom])lished by a thorough archaeological reconnoissance of the Rio Grande 
drainage. 

The first ])hase may, in a sense, be considered complete, since we have 
tletermined the sequence of the i)ottery types; and we should now, if we adhered to 
the original plan, cease work at Peeos and undertake a general reconnoissance of 
the Rio Grande. A modification, however, seems advisable. In the first plaee the 
Pecos ruin has turned out to be so large that we have as yet succeeded in clearing 
only about 12 per cent of it. Then, a number of most interesting and important 
lines of investigation have been suggested by what we have so far done; and none of 
these can be pursued without continued excavation. But some of these new inves- 


32 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


tigations themselves require the side-lights of reconnoissance. Hence it has been 
decided to merge the intensive and extensive phases of our work; to continue digging 
at Pecos, and to carry on at the same time as much reconnoissance as possible. 

Perhaps the most important of the new lines of investigation just referred to is 
that of the development of decorative art. Because of the increasing use of pottery, 
basketry, textiles, etc., as criteria of cultural evolution, the morphology of decora¬ 
tion is receiving more and more attention from anthropologists. But this subject 
is peculiarly difficult of approach, because to gain a true insight into the develop¬ 
ment of any decorative complex, one must have not only abundant material but 
material which is chronologically sequent. Such material for the study of art- 
growth among prehistoric or primitive people has always been exceedingly hard to 
get. Until now almost all work on the subject has been based on hypothetically 
arranged series, and conclusions drawn from it are, of course, not to be relied upon. 
In the Southwest, however, stratigraphic work will eventually provide datable 
specimens from all districts and of all periods, so that we shall be able to determine 
with perfect certainty the exact changes which have taken jjlace in the art of that 
area. The unusually complete pottery series to be had at Pecos will, when care¬ 
fully studied, make clear the details of the local art-growth over a long stretch of 
time. For this reason alone it seems well worth while to persevere until we have 
gathered a very large body of data. There enters here, however, the necessity 
spoken of above for doing concurrent reconnoissance at other sites. The Pecos 
series, while long, can only be recovered from large, stratified rubbish heaps. These 
supply the outline of the development, and also provide abundant material; but, as 
in all stratified deposits, there has been a certain amount of mixing, so that absolutely 
pure material from any given period is only to be found under exceptional condi¬ 
tions, as in sealed rooms, quickly filled kivas, cisterns, etc. Hence, to get a perfect 
series of pure material we must collect pottery from briefly occupied sites of each 
period, sites which do not contain earlier or later mixtures. 

A second investigation whieh promises much of interest, concerns itself with 
the mechanics of pueblo-growth. It was at first supposed that the Pecos ruins were 
the remains of a single structure, erected en bloc, occupied until 1838, and then 
abandoned. The excavations, however, have shown that we have not only ruin 
piled on ruin, but that the population kept shifting about from one part of the 
mesa to another, building and rebuilding. We have uncovered in the course of our 
limited excavations portions of no less than six distinct towns. While some of these 
have been nearly obliterated by stone-robbing, all of them can eventually be traced 
out; and they can all be accurately dated relative to each other by means of the 
pottery and the burials found in and about them. Futhermore, the later structures, 
and perhaps some of the earlier ones as well, can undoubtedly be dated absolutely 
by means of the growth-rings of their roof-beams.* There is also no question but 
that we shall eventually learn the approximate date for the original founding of 
Pecos. This will allow us to estimate the number of changes made and the amount 
of building done during a known number of years, and will give us valuable data on 
the question of the permanency or impermanency of Pueblo house-groups. 

*By the Douglass method, see p. 132. 





Courtesy National Geographic 5V)ciety 





















* 




FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


3S 


1 he consideration of habitations naturally brings up the matter of population. 
Ihis, as will be shown in a later chapter, is a question of fundamental importance. 
W e must learn as much as ])ossible concerning the size of the prehistoric Pueblo 
tribes, and also as much as possible regarding their racial affinities. On both 
problems the excavation of Pecos can shed light. We have already taken out some 
twelve hundred skeletons, and have as yet barely scratched the cemeteries. Wdiile 
some skeletons are too rotted for laboratory measurement, the age and sex of almost 
all of them can be determinetl. As there is no evidence that the Pecos ever cremated 
their dead, or commonly buried them elsewhere than on the mesa, and as cemeteries 
were not often greatly disturbed by later use, it would seem that if we excavate the 
entire site we shall find the bodies of practically all the people who ever lived there. 
Ihus we should be able to estimate roughly the total population of Pecos; and 
when we learn the date of its foundation, we should be able, by correlating this 
knowledge with what we find out about the size of the town at different periods, to 
judge of the number of ])eople who lived there at any given time. Such work will 
also be greatly aided by the fact that we can usually assign any skeleton to its 
I)roper period, either certainly by means of mortuary pottery in its grave, or inferen- 
tially by taking into consideration the depth of the interment, the nature of the 
rid^bish surrounding and covering it, and its association with other nearby skeletons. 

Even if we cannot gauge the size of the population at every j^eriod, the skeletons 
from Pecos will form a very large addition to the material available for somatolo- 
gists. Being relatively datable they should provide data as to the unity or hetero¬ 
geneity of the Pecos people at different times; and, if mixtures have occurred, their 
jjeriod and the effect that they had on the resident population should be discernible. 
Much of value will also be learned as to length of life, infant mortality, and the 
effects of certain important diseases. 

As in the case of the work on art-development, so with the skeletons, outside 
excavation must be carried on to supjjlement the data from Pecos, and to acquire 
material from periods which are not well represented there. The earlier burials at 
Pecos are generally in bad condition, because of the great amounts of rubbish 
which have accumulated above them. By going to contemporaneous sites where, 
because of brief occupation, the interments are not crushed by so great an over¬ 
burden, we can recover well-preserved skeletons and so complete our series. 

The above lines of investigation can only be carried to completion by clearing 
the whole Pecos mesa and the rubbish slopes that surround it on all sides, a task 
that seems V)eyond the present resources of the Trustees. Furthermore, it is not 
advisable, it appears to me, that so important a ruin be entirely exhausted at one 
time or by one excavator. Future work will of course serve to introduce better 
methods of excavation; and the development of the science of archaeology will 
inevitably result in the raising of new problems which today are not even suspected. 
Hence it seems best to leave a considerable portion of Pecos untouched, and so 
available for the improved technique and the broader knowledge of another genera¬ 
tion of archaeologists. We do, however, hope to gather much more material, and 
at least to make a start toward the solution of the important problems of art- 
development, pueblo-growth, and the size of the population at different periods. 


34 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


In the prosecution of such studies as have just been suggested we must be care- 
fuHo hold ourselves to a proper balance between the detailed and the general. The 
details of archaeology are in themselves so interesting that it is fatally easy to be¬ 
come completelj" absorbed in them, and there is always the excuse that without 
close and accurate work one cannot arrive at trustworthy conclusions. The result 
is that too often one arrives at no conclusions at all. It is quite as fatally easy to 
ignore detail (with the plausible excuse that the close worker cannot see the forest 
for the trees) and strike out blithely on the primrose path of speculation. If 
archaeology dealt with phenomena less infinitely variable in themselves and less 
bewilderingly diverse in their interactions, it might be possible to reduce it to rules 
and formulas, and to decide just how far to delve into detail, and just how much to 
generalize. But that is not possible, and apparently never can be. Each problem 
must be attacked in its own way, and every worker must decide for himself how he 
shall apportion his efforts. 

In the case of Pecos, the way seems fairly clear. The nature of the site and the 
circumstances of its occupancy have resulted in the laying down of deposits impor¬ 
tant and interesting in themselves, which also epitomize, as it were, a long 
period in the culture-history of the Southwest. Pecos may be made to serve as an 
index to a considerable part of that culture-history, and so, it seems to me, too much 
effort cannot be spent upon the details of its archaeology. But for the very reason 
that it is an index, it cannot be treated as an isolated phenomenon, and we must 
keep constantly in mind the more general problems that it is being used to solve. 

To understand the problems of Southwestern archaeology it is necessary to 
consider the nature of our knowledge of man in America. Historical information in 
regard to the American Indian runs back at the farthest for only about four hundred 
years, and in most parts of the New World the record is very much shorter. 
Furthermore, where the historical record begins, there, as a rule, the history of the 
Indian abruptly ceases. There are a few exceptions, such as those provided by the 
datable monuments of the Maya; and certain instances, as in Peru and Mexico, 
where native traditionists have set down in European characters the more or less 
legendary histories of their own particular peoples. At best, then, recorded history 
for the aborigines of the New World is brief, and in the case of most areas it is 
entirely lacking. The student has before him data as to the distribution of great 
numbers of tribes, infinitely diverse in language and customs and ranging in 
culture from the lowest savagery to a relatively high civilization. This state of 
affairs must of course be the result of a very long sequence of historical events, 
and our problem, as Sapir has so admirably phrased it, “may be metaphori¬ 
cally defined as the translation of a two-dimensional photographie picture of 
reality into the three-dimensional picture which lies back of it. Is it possible, ” he 
asks, “to read time perspective into the flat surface of American culture, as we read 
space perspective into the flat surface of a photograph.^’ ’* Sapir proceeds to answer 
his question in the affirmative, basing his deductions largely on the inferential 
evidence provided by ethnology and linguistics; he emphasizes, however, the great 
potential importance of archaeological studies. Sueh studies had not, when Sapir 
*Sapir, 1916, p. 2. 


FIELD WORK AT PECOS 


35 


wrote, been prosecuted with any great energy, but during the past decade archaeol¬ 
ogists have been devoting more and more attention to the chronological aspects of 
their work. There has been a very general search for definite information bearing 
on the time-relations of the remains of man in America. Nowhere has this search 
been more diligently prosecuted than in the Southwest, and the results so far 
obtained are extremely promising. 

To make clear the nature of the chronological problems of the Southwest, and 
to show how the work at Pecos can be brought to bear upon them, it is necessary to 
lay before the reader an outline of the data which are already at hand, or in other 
words to undertake a summary of our present knowledge of Southwestern 
archaeology. 


PART THREE 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOCxY 
THE MODERN PUEBLOS 

The Southwest, archaeologicall;s speaking, comprises those ])arts of the south¬ 
western United States and northern Alexico which are, or were formerly, inhab¬ 
ited by Indians of Pueblo culture. This culture will be more fully described in the 
section devoted to the modern Pueblos; for present purposes it suffices to say that 
its outstanding characteristics are sedentary agricultural life in permanent villages 
of stone or adobe, the manufacture of excellent ])ottery, and the use of the hand 
loom. 

When we come to define the limits of the Pueblo area we find our only serious 
difficulty in the south. This is partly because little exploration has been carried out 
in northern Mexico; but to an even greater extent because the peoples of that 
region were also sedentary agricidturists between whose culture and that of the 
Pueblos there were few very fundamental differences. Were we to use as a criterion 
the architecture typical of the Pueblos, we should have to establish our boundary at 
or slightly north of the Gila river in Arizona, and along the international border of 
New Mexico. Relying upon the evidence of pottery, however, we can extend our 
limits to include the Gila and southern Arizona, as well as the great inland basin of 
northern Chihuahua that lies south of New Mexico. Certain well-marked Mexican 
traits occur in these areas; but the pottery, as will eventually be shown, is definitely 
Southwestern in type. Accordingly it seems best to accept, provisionally at least, 
the more extensive southern boundaries. 

To the east, north, and west the ])roblem of delimitation is much sim])ler, 
for in those directions the surrounding tribes were all in a much lower state of 
culture than were the Pueblos, and wherever regions adjoining the Southwest 
show traces of agriculture, permanent stone houses, and pottery, these may safely 
be ascribed to Pueblo influence. Although much exploration remains to be done, 
the approximate limits are already apparent. They include, as shown on the 
accompanying map (fig. 3), most of Arizona and New Mexico, a small part of 
Colorado, and a large portion of Utah. 

This vast area has very distinct topographic and climatic characteristics; it is 
essentially a plateau country, high and arid. Much of it is desert. Where conditions 
are slightly better, the land is clothed with cedars and pinyons. Only the slopes of 
the eastern mountains and of certain interior ranges are really forested. Grass is 
everywhere scanty, game is correspondingly scarce; nor are there any wild food- 
plants of value. Much of the soil, however, is fertile, and where water can be got 
upon it is surprisingly reproductive. While the country, then, could support only a 
very limited number of hunting people, it was capable of providing sustenance for a 
relatively large agricultural population. That this productivity was once fully 
taken advantage of is proved by the thousands of ruins that are scattered over the 
length and breadth of the area. In more recent times, however, most of this great 
territory was abandoned, and when the Spaniards arrived in 1540 they founcl the 


PLATE 15 



a 



b 

MODERN' PUEBLO VILLAGES 

a, Taos, a terraced village of the old type in northern New Mexico, b, Two-story house in lesuque pueblo, 
New Mexico; harvest time, corn heaped at the right, strings of chile drying in the sun, and jerked meat hanging 
under the balcony. 

















THE ]\r ODER N PUEBLOS 37 

Pueblos living in a comparatively restricted region at about the centre of their 
former range. 

To trace the history of these people, to discover their origins, to learn how they 
conc{uered their harsh environment, how they increased and spread out over the 
plateau, and how and why they eventually failed to hold their own in the struggle 
for existence, these are the chief aims of the study of Southwestern archaeology. 



A review of the subject-matter of Southwestern archaeology must necessarily 
begin with a consideration of the still-inhabited pueblos of New ]Mexico and Ari¬ 
zona.* These fascinating communities preserve the ancient culture of the South- 

*No attempt has been made to include in the bibliography the enormous literature regarding the modern 
Pueblos; the following more or less popular works, however, will give the general reader an excellent idea of their 
life and customs: Bandelier, 1890, 1890, b; Donaldson, 1893; Cushing, 1901, 1920; Lummis, 1906, 1910; Hough, 
1915; Saunders, 1912; Goddard, 1921. Scientific studies of Pueblo religion, social organization, and material 
culture are to be found in the writings of Fewkes {Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, American Anthropolo¬ 
gist, Journal of American Folk-Lore)’, J. and M. C. Stevenson {Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology); Dorsey 
and Voth {Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Series); E. C. Parsons {American Anthropologist, Memoirs 
American Anthropological Association, Journal of American Folk-Lore); and Kroeber {Anthropological Papers of the 
American Museum of Natural History). See also the articles on the various Pueblo towns and Pueblo linguistic 
stocks in “Handbook of American Indians” {Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology). 























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T H E M O D E R N PEER L O S 


39 


west in almost its aboriginal purity; even the most sophisticated of them are little 
more than veneered by European civilization, and we can still, as Lummis has so 
aptly phrased it, “catch our archaeology alive”. 

At the time of the Spanish concpiest the Pueblo Indians numbered about 
20,000, and lived in some seventy towns. These Indians, although very similar to 
each other in arts, customs, and religion, were divided into several distinct linguistic 
groups (see map, fig. 4). 

In the northwest lived the Hopi, who spoke a Shoshonean language allied to 
that of the Utes, Paiutes and Comanches. On the western border of New Mexico 
were the Zuni, whose tongue has no known affinities. East of Zuili came the 
Keres, divided into two groups, one on the middle waters of the Puerco, the other 
on the Rio Grande north of the present location of Albuquerque. The Keresan 
language, like the Zunian, has no known affinities. All the rest of the Pueblos 
belong to the Tanoan stock, a group which had five well-marked subdivisions: the 
Tewa, Tigiia, Jemez, Tano, and Piro. Tanoan has recently been suspected to be 
connected in some way with the Kiowan linguistic stock of the Plains. In general 
the Tanoan peoples were confined to the Rio Grande and its immediate vicinity. 
The Tewa subdivision occupied a continuous area north of the Keres. The Tigua 
were partly to the north of the Tewa at Toas and Picuris, partly to the south of the 
Keres along the Rio Grande below Albuquerque and west toward the Manzanos 
mountains. The Jemez were also divided, one group lying west of the Keres in 
the Jemez valley, the other at Pecos far to the east on the upper Pecos river. The 
Tano occupied the eastern tributaries of the Rio Grande south of the Tewa, and 
between the Keres and the Pecos branch of the Jemez. The Piro villages began 
below the country of the southern Tigua and extended down the Rio Grande about 
half way to El Paso; there were also several towns east of the river in the Salinas 
valley. 

All these different Pueblo peoples live today in approximately the same places 
as they did in 1540, with the exception of the Tano and Piro, who have become to 
all intents and purposes extinct, and the Pecos, who, as we have seen, moved in 
1838 to join their kindred at Jemez. There are at the present time only twenty-six 
villages, and their inhabitants number not over 9,000 souls. 

Although reduced in numbers, and to a greater or less extent affected by 
European contact, the life of the Pueblos of today is surprisingly like that of their 
ancestors of the Kith century, as described by Castaneda and the other early 
Spanish chroniclers. 

The most characteristic feature of Pueblo life is the pueblo itself, that peculiar 
type of village which has given the culture its name. A pueblo is a closely-built 
agglomeration of rectangular living-rooms, a sort of exaggerated beehive, or great 
apartment house, which shelters an entire community (pi. 15, a). The individual 
rooms may be grouped in various ways, as in a long row, about a court, or in a 
solid mass; but close adherence of room to room is always the rule, and for even 
greater compactness the villages are usually terraced, sometimes to a height of 
several stories (pi. 43,). The people live, cook, and sleep in the outer and 
upper chambers, and use the inner and lower ones for the storage of their belongings 
and particularly for their hoards of harvested corn. 


40 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


The system of architecture is simple. The unit of construction is a rectangular 
room with walls of heavy masonry set in adobe mud or laid up of pure adobe. Each 
room is spanned across its short axis by four or five large peeled logs; over these in 
the opposite direction are placed smaller poles, then twigs or bark for chinking, and 
finally a layer of adobe. If a second room is to be built above the first, the walls are 
simply continued upward and the roof of the lower serves as the floor of the upper. 
Lateral rooms are added by merely constructing walls against those already erected. 
Doorways are small and in old times seldom opened on the ground level; first story 
apartments having been entered by trap-doors in their roofs. Windows did not 
exist; little ventilating holes near the fireplaces and smoke-vents in the roof kept 
the air breathable. Although modern frame doors and glazed windows have now 
appeared at the more progressive towns (pi. 15, b), and the rooms of such pueblos 
are larger and more comfortable than of old, the people still live largely out of doors, 
in the courtyards, under the balconies, and on the housetops; so much so that even 
today a person’s housetop is still considered a public thoroughfare and no Pueblo 
ever takes umbrage at its being used as such. 

In addition to the rooms of the houses proper, each pueblo of the early historic 
period possessed several kivas, round or rectangular chambers, usually sunk into 
the earth so that their roofs were flush with the ground, and entered from above by 
means of a hatchway and ladder. The kiva is found in practically all the modern 
towns, and plays a most important role in Pueblo life; it is a social and work room 
for the men, a council chamber, and (its most important function) the scene of the 
secret portions of the religious observances; all modern kivas, except those at 
Taos and the Hopi towns, are above ground (pi. 16, b). 

In spite of the solid construction of their towns, and the great labor involved in 
building them, the Pueblo Indians are (or rather were in the recent past) less 
firmly anchored to them than might be supposed. As evidence of this we have the 
fact that none of the modern pueblos, except Acoma and Zuni, occupy exactly the 
same sites as they did in 1540. Every other town has moved at least once, and 
many of them several times. Much of this shifting about was due, of course, to the 
wars of the revolt and reconquest between 1680 and 1700; but the Pueblos were 
always ready to abandon their dwellings on what seem to ns the slightest pretexts, 
and were usually little disposed to return to them again, even under Spanish 
coercion. Many freshly abandoned villages were seen by the earliest explorers; and 
in more recent times many shifts have been made for apparently the most trivial 
reasons. The influence of the priests and the establishment of land grants have 
served to render the towns of the last two centuries more or less permanent, but 
it is clear that the Pueblos have little feeling for mere localities and small com¬ 
punction in abandoning old homes. 

This relative impermanency of towns whose construction seems so very 
permanent is a highly important phenomenon; it helps to explain many otherwise 
puzzling features of Southwestern archaeology, and will be more fully discussed 
when we come to consider the subject of the prehistoric ruins. 

The Pueblos are primarily agriculturists. They have always hunted to a 
certain extent, and at present possess more or less livestock, but their main reliance 


PLATE 16 



a 
























THE MODERN PUEBLOS 


41 


is now, as it was in the past, upon corn. Corn, with beans and squashes, forms the 
bulk of their sustenance. The Pueblos are expert farmers. They grow crops in 
places, and under conditions, that at first sight appear to be absolutely hopeless. 
Irrigation is practiced where possible, but their success depends mostly upon the 
intelligent choice of ground, deep planting, and the most careful cultivation and 
weeding. Centuries of selection have resulted in the develo])ment of hardy, deep- 
rooted varieties of corn which will germinate with little moisture and mature 
quickly after the brief midsummer rains. 

After harvest the corn is dried, husked, and stored away on the ear. For use it 
is ground to meal on a flat stone slab, the mefate, and made into various dishes, the 
most characteristic of which is a thin paper-like bread cooked on a stone griddle.* 

The governmental, social, and religious organizations of the Pueblos are 
highly complex and at present are imperfectly understood. The reason for this is 
that among the Pueblos the secular and the religious are inextricably intertwined, 
and the people are so exceedingly reticent in regard to their religion that investiga¬ 
tors have had the greatest difficulty in finding out the true meaning of what would 
appear to be the simplest phenomena. To make the most general sort of statement, 
one can say that each Pueblo is a strictly self-contained, closely knit, and autono¬ 
mous unit, essentially democratic so far as wealth and living conditions are con¬ 
cerned. It is governed by elective officers, whose functions are both religious and 
civil. Marriage is monogamous, descent is, or was, usually through the mother, and 
the social unit is the clan, or group of blood-relatives in the female line. 

The religious system concerns itself principally with the growing of crops; its 
ceremonies have to do, therefore, with the fertilization of corn and particularly with 
the production of the ever-needed rain. IMinor but still important features are the 
propagation of game, success in the chase, and the cure of sickness. The ritual is 
elaborate, involving the use of a great mass of paraphernalia. The public cere¬ 
monies are often highly spectacular. During the ceremonies many “prayer sticks” 
are made and deposited in shrines; much corn-meal is used, both symbolically, and 
in the form of actual offerings to the gods. 

The house building, the agriculture, the religious practices, and the social 
system of the Pueblos have been relatively little affected by their three hundred 
years of intercourse with the whites. But their native minor arts, with the single 
exception of pottery-making, have disappeared, particularly since the American 
occupation with its influx of good tools and serviceable textile fabrics. For informa¬ 
tion as to the old arts we must therefore turn to the narratives of the early Spanish 
explorers, and to such objects as have been preserved by the people and have found 
their way into museum collections. 

One of the most imj)ortant industries was weaving. In the 16th century 
cotton was grown at all the pueblos where the local climate was not too rigorous, 
was spun into yarn, and woven on primitive but efficient hand-looms. The cultiva¬ 
tion of cotton has now been given up everywhere except in the Hopi country, where 
a few plants are still raised to provide the native fibre which is considered indis¬ 
pensable for certain ceremonial usages. 

*See “ZuiSi Breadstuff” (Cushing, 1920). This is a work remarkable for its eompleteness of detail, its keen 
insight into Pueblo life, and its literary charm. 


42 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


Weaving was, and still is, considered man’s work, the looms usually being set 
up in the kivas. Few of the old cotton fabrics survive in everyday use, but cere¬ 
monial kilts are still made; the yarn, however, is of American manufacture. After 
the introduction of sheep, wool-largely took the place of cotton; the Hopi were 
particularly adept in the making of woolen textiles, and even now produce some 
blankets and a large number of women’s dresses, the latter being one of their princi¬ 
pal articles of trade. 

The clothing of all the Pueblos, except those of the extreme northwest, where 
contact with the Plains tribes served to make popular the use of fitted skin garments, 
was essentially alike. Although native clothes are no longer much worn, the 
ceremonial dress probably reflects older conditions quite accurately (pis. 16, a; 17,b). 
In dances the men wear a breechcloth and a short kilt fastened about the 
waist and falling to a little above the knees. The man’s short-sleeved cotton shirt, 
not tailored, but made by simply sewing two square pieces of fabric together and 
attaching small sleeves, was apparently once in common use; a few such shirts are 
still in existence as treasured heirlooms, and are sometimes worn by the musicians 
during religious dances. The footgear is a hard-soled moccasin; it is uncertain 
whether or not the sandal of ancient times survived in the early historic 
period. 

The women are somewhat more conservative in dress than the men. Their 
principal garment is a sleeveless dress of native (usually Hopi) weave, made in a 
single piece. When put on, the dress reaches to just below the knees, and is so 
fastened as to leave the left shoulder and sometimes the left breast exposed (pi. 17,b). 
During ceremonies the women of some villages go barefoot, but for every-day 
wear most Pueblo women have moccasins with long attached uppers which are 
wrapped about the calf of the leg (pi. 17, a). Both sexes complete their costume 
with a robe thrown over the shoulders; in old times this was of rabbit-skin or turkey- 
feathers, now it is either a Navaho blanket or an American shawl. 

Basketry is a lost art at most of the pueblos, the requirements of the people 
being supplied by trade with the Apache, Pima, and Paiute. It is probable that this 
was to some extent also the case in the early historic period. At the present time 
heavy coiled basketry is made at the Hopi towns of the Second Mesa, wickerwork 
trays at Oraibi, and a plaited yucca basket with a wooden ring about the rim is 
produced at several towns, notably at San Felipe, whose people make a specialty 
of this particular type. 

Pottery, in spite of the growing use of tin oil-cans for carrying water, and of 
cheap American china for serving food, still plays an important part in the domestic 
economy of the Pueblos. Even today, cooking is largely done in native pots, and 
earthen ollas serve almost exclusively for the storing and cooling of drinking-water. 
The art of pottery-making, too, has been kept alive by the constant demand for 
decorated vessels by the traders, who ship them in large quantities to curio dealers. 
While this commercial demand has naturally resulted in careless work and a certain 
degeneration in technique and ornamentation, its effects have been less pernicious 
than might be expected. There are still many expert potters, who turn out fine 
vessels, even with the knowledge that they are to be sold to white men. 


PLATE 17 



PUEBLO ( OSTUMES 

, Woman of San Ildefonso in ever.y-day dress, h, (.’orn dancers ul Santo Domingo. 































PLATE 18 



a, Hopi. b, Cochiti. 


MODERN PUEBLO POTTERY 

c, Santo Domingo, d, Aooma. e, Ziini. f, Santa Clara. 


g, Tesuque. h, Sia. i, San Ildefonso 



























THE :modern pueblos 


43 


Pottery is now regularly made at some of the Hopi towns, at Ziini, Acoma, 
Laguna, Sia, Santo Domingo, Cochiti, San Ildefonso, Tesiiqiie, Santa Clara, and 
San Juan (pi. 18). Elsewhere it is only manufactured in limited quantities in the 
form of undecorated cooking jars, or is turned out by women from the pottery¬ 
making pueblos who happen to have married away from home. Pottery was for¬ 
merly, of course, a common product at every village. A detailed report on the 
subject of pottery-making will be published in an early number of the present 
series. 

To sum up. The Pueblos live in closely-knit autonomous groups, a single 
large building, made up of many small rectangular rooms, often sheltering an entire 
community. The people are primarily agriculturists, raise corn and grind it on the 
metate; are excellent and prolific potters; and understand the use of the hand- 
loom. 

No description of the Pueblos can be complete without mention of their 
hereditary enemies, the nomadic tribes of the Southwest. These Indians gained 
their livelihood principally by hunting, and were not bound down by the possession 
of permanent towns or cultivated fields. What little agriculture they practised 
was of a haphazard sort, and they were always free to shift their range at will. 
Between the village-dweller and the nomad there has always, and in every part of 
the world, been bitter enmity; never more bitter, perhaps, than in the Southwest. 

Apparently the roaming tribes seldom waged definite wars against the Pueblos, 
nor did they often carry out organized attacks on their towns. They hung about in 
the mountains ready at any time to pounce upon outlying farm settlements, cut 
off hunting parties, steal women, plunder corn-fields, burn crops, and in general 
make life as miserable as possible for their more sedentary neighbors. Their raids 
were intermittent, there were often periods of quiet, and even times of actual peace 
with open trading between the Pueblos and the nomads. But such armistices 
never lasted long. 

Against these tactics the Pueblos were singularly helpless. Good fighters they 
were, but tied to their villages and fields they could seldom bring their whole force 
to bear upon enemies so bafflingly elusive. They maintained themselves, how¬ 
ever, by constant watchfulness, prompt defensive measures, and the strength of 
their fortress-like dwellings. 

Nomads were present in the Southwest in 1540, for Castaneda records depre¬ 
dations in the Rio Grande country by the Teyas, apparently a Shoshonean plains 
tribe, and states that villages had recently been abandoned because of their raids.* 
Since the middle of the 17th century the Navaho and Apache have been terrible 
scourges, the latter having forced the desertion of many Piro and Tigua towns to 
the west of the Rio Grande. About 1700 the Comanche began to press in from 
the northeast and east, with disastrous results for Pecos. The Utes and the northern 
Apache were always troublesome to the Taos and northern Tewa. It is, indeed, 
only since the American occupation of Arizona and New Mexico that any effective 
protection has been furnished to the Pueblos, and only in very recent years has 
the ancient menace of the nomad been entirely removed. 

*Winship, 1896, pp. 323, 324. 


THE PREHISTORIC PITEBLOS 


The Spanish explorers of the Southwest were indefatigable travellers, acute 
observers and, best of all, accurate recorders of the places they visited and of the 
things they saw. Their accounts enable us to locate the sites, and in most cases the 
actual ruins, of practically every pueblo that was inhabited in the 16th and 17th 
centuries. That any large or important towns could have escaped their thorough 
search and careful recording is almost impossible. Hence, any ruin which is not 
identifiable as a village mentioned in one or another of the documentary sources 
must, unless it holds internal evidence to the contrary, be considered to have been 
abandoned prior to the year 1540. 

Internal evidence of historic occupancy is usually easy to find, for very soon 
after the conquest the Spanish introduced horses, sheep, goats, and cattle, whose 
bones come to light in every refuse heap of historic times; they also traded to the 
Indians glass beads, iron tools, china, and other objects of European make that turn 
up in considerable quantities in the rooms of,the ruins and in the graves of the dead. 
While the presence of these things proves white contact, their absence does not 
certainly prove the contrary; nevertheless any given site containing no object of 
European provenience may be pretty safely considered prehistoric, particularly if 
extensive excavations have been carried out in it. 

Applying the above two tests to all the known ruins, we find that for every 
village of the historic period there are literally hundreds which must have been 
abandoned before 1540. These lie not only in the districts inhabited by the present 
day Pueblos and their 16th Century ancestors, but are scattered far and wide over 
the entire Southwest. The ruined dwellings and the specimens found in them show 
so close a similarity to the houses and artifacts of the modern tribes that there has 
never been any serious doubt that they are relics of the direct cultural ancestors of 
the Pueblos. The immense number of the ruins, however, and the vast territory 
which they occupy make it certain that one of three conditions, or some combination 
of two or more of them, must have obtained: either the population was formerly 
very much larger than it was in 1540; or the country was inhabited for a tremen¬ 
dously long time; or the ancient Pueblos occupied their villages for very brief 
periods. It will be noticed that the time element is the unknown quantity which 
prevents our choosing between these three possibilities. If we knew the relative 
date of the founding and abandonment of every ruin in the Southwest, it would 
be a comparatively simple matter, by estimating the approximate population of 
each, and plotting the results on a series of maps, to visualize the entire history of 
the Pueblo peoples. Our task, therefore, is: first, to locate all the ruins and record 
their size; second, to determine the length of their occupancy, and their age relative 
to each other; and, third, to establish their age, not only in relative terms, but 
according to the years of our own calendar. This is a heavy j^rogram and one 
which naturally can never be completely carried out, but it is best to face the 
situation as it is, and to realize that if our researches are to be worth anything they 
must be undertaken not only with a clear idea of the end to be attained, but also 
with a full realization of the difficulties to be encountered. 

The location, description, and measurement of ruins can be accomplished by 


THE PREHISTORIC PUEBLOS 


45 


industrious exploration; an arbitrary rule for estimating population according to 
size of settlements should, if consistently applied, yield more or less valid results; 
both these things are merely matters of persistent work. The all-important ques¬ 
tions of chronology, however, are less obvious in nature and less easy of solution; to 
settle them we must rank the ruins in the order of their building and determine if 
possible the length of their occupancy. The following methods of attack have been 
tried: 

Legendary evidence. Great dependence has been placed by certain students 
upon the migration legends of the modern Pueblos, and many prehistoric ruins have 
been classified as to age and as to cultural affinities by this means alone. Recent 
ethnological studies, however, seem to show that the Pueblo as an historian is at best 
unreliable; while archaeological evidence seldom confirms, and often directly 
refutes, the statements of the native traditionist. 

Preservation. The state of preservation of ruins is seldom a good criterion of 
age. The nature of the site, the exposure of walls to the elements and of founda¬ 
tions to surface drainage, conflagrations, the removal of roof-beams, all these more 
or less fortuitous and generally indeterminable factors cause deductions based upon 
preservation to have very doubtful value. 

Comparison of types. Crude and primitive-looking remains, when compared 
with relics of an obviously more advanced type are usually, and doubtless often 
correctly, assumed to belong to an earlier period. This method of chronological 
evaluation must, however, be very cautiously applied and should always have the 
support of corroborative evidence, since in the history of the Southwest many 
cases of degeneration in culture and of irregularity in culture-growth have 
occurred.* Care must also be exercised not to mistake the survival of archaic 
traits in peripheral regions for evidence of antiquity. 

Stratigraphic evidence. The ideal form of chronological evidence is provided by 
stratigraphy, i.e., when remains of one type are found lying below those of another. 
Such evidence is of course conclusive, and has provided us with sure data as to the 
relative age of several phases of Southwestern culture. If we could find in each 
district sites containing material running from the very earliest times down to the 
period of abandonment, our task would be a comparatively simple one; but no such 
site has ever been discovered. Pecos presents the longest complete series so far 
known, but Pecos does not carry us back to really remote times. Even short 
series, covering two or three periods, are rare enough; but they do occur and can be 
made, by the principle of overlapping, to yield excellent results. 

To take full advantage of stratigraphic evidence, whether it be presented in a 
comparatively long series or by an overlapping of several short ones, the investi¬ 
gator must select for study those phenomena which most accurately reflect changes 
in culture or, what amounts to the same thing, chronological periods. Pottery has 
so far provided the most useful material for such studies, as it is abundant at all 
sites except the very earliest, is readily classifiable, and is a highly sensitive register 
of cultural change.f 

*For example, the excellent masonry and fine ceramics of the Chaco might easily be considered later than the 
slipshod building and poor pottery of many actually younger ruins on the upper Rio Grande not far to the east. 

fValuable but much less easily acquired evidence is provided by architecture, physical type, skull deformation, 
mortuary customs, sandals, etc.; these should all be taken into account and used to check the results obtained 
from consideration of the pottery. 


46 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


Apparently the first application of the princi])le of stratigraphy to South¬ 
western problems was made by Richard Wetherill, when in the nineties he defined 
the Basket-Maker culture, and then determined, by discovering its remains below 
those of cliff-houses, that it represented an earlier chronological period rather than a 
mere local development.* Fewkes at Casa Grandef and Cummings in the Kayenta 
district^ used the evidence of superposition for the relative dating of archaeological 
material; and in 1914 Guernsey and the writer established the stratigraphic position 
of the pre-Pueblo**. It remained for Nelson, however, to recognize that the most 
reliable results could be obtained by passing downwards, so to speak, from the 
known to the unknown. He attacked the problem, accordingly, at the early 
historic ruins of central New Mexico and worked backwards, basing his conclusions 
on stratigraphic evidence, and using pottery as the criterion for classification. In 
this way he was able to arrange in their proper sequence the principal pottery types, 
and hence the principal chronological periods, of the Rio Grande.ft Nelson also 
conducted the first well thought-out attack on the chronological problems of the 
Southwest in their broader aspectsJJ; and, although his work in this field has un¬ 
fortunately been interrupted, he has blazed a trail which will be more and more 
followed as time goes on. 

A fifth method for obtaining chronological data has been devised by Prof. A. E. 
Douglass of the L^niversity of Arizona. It depends upon the study of the annual 
growth-rings of coniferous trees. The Douglass .system, which holds out the most 
brilliant prospects for accurate dating, has not yet been extensively employed. For 
this reason, and also because its application can be more clearly understood when the 
reader is better acquainted with the nature and distribution of the ruins, discussion 
of it will be deferred until after we have presented such data as we have in regard to 
the prehistoric remains. 

In the following sections we take up the description of the antiquities of the 
Southwest by river drainages (fig. 5). This is not only a convenient method for 
arranging the material but, as will be seen, the river drainages form in most cases 
definite areas of specialization. At the end of each section is given a selected 
bibliography of the archaeology of the region; the titles included are in most cases 
modern scientific papers embodying original material; notices of ruins by early 
travellers, brief references in popular articles, and second-hand descriptions are 
only listed where better sources are lacking. The most valuable contributions are 
marked with asterisks. 

*Prudden, 1897, p. 61. 

fFewkes, 1912, p. 102. 

JCummings, 1910, p. 10. 

**Kidder-Guern.sey, 1919, p. 12. 

ttNelson, 1916. .\n attempt to do the same thing on the Imsis of comparative studies of the pottery had been 
made by the writer (Kidder, 1915); the fact that the sequence of types there suggested was proved by Nelson to be 
correct is encouraging because it shows that such comparative studies may be of value in regions where no strati¬ 
graphic evidence can be discovered. The latter, however, must always be diligently searched for, as it forms the 
only certain basis for deduction. 

JtNelson, 1919. 


PLATE 19 



After Jackson 


a 



After Judd 


O so 

cr..' nr rt[T 

Courtesy Nat. Geog. Soc. 


•- LARCZ SrONC 


PUEBLO BOXITO 

a, Restoration showing interior terracing and high, blank outer wall, b. Ground-plan; the circular chambers 
are kivas, the rectangular structures living-rooms. 










































THE SAN JUAN 


The San Juan is considered first because it is in many ways the best known 
archaeologically of the mafor territorial divisions of the Southwest. Furthermore, 



8, Lower Gila; 9, Chihuahua Basin. 


it has yielded a great amount of material in regard to the oldest phases of human 
development in our area. More important still is the fact that the San Juan 
appears to have been the breeding ground for many of Hie basic traits ot South¬ 
western culture and centre of disseminaton. 

The San Juan rises in the mountains of southwestern Colorado, and flows in a 
generally westerly direction through northern New Alexico and southern Utah to 
empty at last into the Colorado river. Its watershed, if such a term can be applied 
to country which normally sheds no water, covers an area of some 30,000 square 
















48 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


miles.* It is for the most part a high, barren, and arid plateau cut by a multitude of 
dry, sandy washes and equally dry, gorgelike canyons. The San Juan itself carries 
water throughout its entire length, but its tributaries, except those upper ones 
which find their source in the parent mountains, contain no living streams, and only 
run during the early spring or after the violent downpours of the midsummer rainy 
season. In spite of this great general aridity, the San Juan country, from its 
peculiar geological formation, possesses a large number of fine springs of clear, pure 



Fig. 6 —The San Juan area. The different shadings indicate the three principal 
sub-cultures; the districts of highest specialization are shown in black. 1, Chaco 
Canyon. 2, Mesa Verde. 3, Kayenta. 


water. They usually appear at the heads of gorges or at the bases of cliffs, are 
seldom large, and their overflow sinks at once into the sand, to seep off thus hidden 
along the rocky beds of the canyons. But these springs redeem a land which 
would otherwise be hopeless for human occupancy, they furnish abundant drinking 
water for those who know how and where to find them, and their trickling under¬ 
flow moistens the earth of the valley bottoms just enough to permit the growing of 
drought-resisting varieties of corn. ]\Iany parts of the mesa-tops, also, can in 

*For an excellent description of the topography and climate of the San Juan, see Prudden, 1903. Much useful 
information, and a very complete bibliography, are also to be found in Gregory, 1916. 


















PLATE 20 




b 



c 

MASOXRY OF SAN JUAN RUINS 

a, Chaco Canyon (Pueblo Bonito). b, Mesa Verde (Cliff Palace), c, Kayenta. 

































































« 


ft* 


I 

» 


I 





i t 


( 






I* 


* 


« 




t 



9 




ft 

f 



. I 


% 


s 



4 



•p 



THE SAX JUAN 


49 


favorable years be cultivated. Hard as these conditions woidd appear to be for an 
agricultural ])eo])le, they did not prevent the ancient Pueblos from occupying the 
country for a long ])eriod of time, or from developing there the greatest achieve¬ 
ments of their civilization. No one has attempted to compute the number of ruins 
in the San Juan drainage, but it must run well into the thousands. 

lo bring some order into so vast an amount of material, it is necessary to make 
at least a preliminary classification. For this ])urpose we have depended ])rimarily 
upon the evidence of pottery; there are: 

1. Sites with well-developed pottery (Pueblo ruins). 

2. Sites with less-developed pottery (pre-Pueblo ruins). 

3. Sites with crude ])ottery (])ost-Basket Maker ruins). 

4. Sites with no pottery (Basket ^Maker sites). 

Of the first class (that which includes sites with well-developed pottery) there 
are certain ruins which show evidences of high specialization; these may con¬ 
veniently be considered under the following heads: 

Chaco Canyon 
]Mesa Verde 
Kayenta 

Each of the above grou])s is named for the district in which the culture pro¬ 
ducing the characteristic i)ottery reached its highest development, but it must be 
understood that the names are by no means geographically descriptive, for the 
cultures in question all extended beyond the limits of the type localities and, indeed, 
in some cases even beyond the confines of the San Juan drainage (fig. 6). 

SITES WITH WELL-DEVELOPED POTTERY (PUEBLO RUINS) 

Chaco Canyon 

The enormous ruins that re])resent the greatest achievement of this culture lie 
in and near the Chaco Canyon, a southern tributary of the San Juan in northwestern 
New Mexico. There are in this locality ten or twelve major sites and a considerable 
number of smaller ones; some of the latter seem to belong to the Chaco Cajiyon 
group, while others are obviously of other types. Of the major ruins the best known 
are Pueblo Bonito, Chettro Kettle, Pueblo Alto, Penasca Blanca, and Hungo Pavie. 
Each of these great buildings contained one hundred or more ground-floor rooms and 
was terraced from front to back to a height of three, four, or possibly even five 
stories, thus considerably more than doubling the number of ground-floor chambers. 
Although they vary considerabh^ in detail, all the Chaco pueblos are alike in 
general plan. The building normally surrounds three sides of a court, being ter¬ 
raced back from an initial height of one story at the court to three or more stories at 
the rear, which is always a high blank wall. The third side of the court is enclosed 
by a tier of one-story rooms, usually bowed outward and connecting the two ends or 
wings of the main building. Within the court are the kivas, and usually just outside 
the tier of low rooms lie the rubbish heai)s. The frontage is always southerly. The 


50 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


accompanying ground-plan and restored elevation (pi. 19) are of Pueblo Bonito, the 
greatest single structure in the valley; Bonito is in most respects a typical example 
of Chaco architecture, but differs from the majority of the ruins in being D-shaped 
rather than rectangular. 

Aside from their large size, the Chaco ruins are noteworthy for massive archi¬ 
tecture and particularly for excellence of masonry. The walls of the best period are 
generally made with a hearting of adobe-laid stonework, or rubble, and are finished 
on the two surfaces with what might be called a veneering of carefully selected 
tabular stones, evenly arranged in courses that often vary in thickness and thus 
give the work a very pleasing texture (pi. ^20, a). The details of construction, such 
as the roofs of rooms, the jambs of doorways, and the corners of walls are notable 
for excellence of finish and accuracy of line. The living-rooms are of unusually 
large size and height. 

Our knowledge of the kivas is still incomplete, but they appear to be of much 
interest and importance. As we shall often have occasion to refer to the kivas in the 
various groups of ruins, it may be well to give here a brief description of the 
principal features of such rooms. The prehistoric kiva was normally a round 
subterranean chamber, the roof being flush with the ground. Entrance was 
ordinarily gained by a ladder leading down through a combined hatchway and 
smoke-vent in the roof. In the floor there was always a firepit. Ventilation was 
supplied by a flue running downwards outside the kiva wall and opening at the floor 
level. The hot air and smoke from the fireplace passed up and out through the 
entrance hatchway; fresh, cool air being sucked down the flue and into the room. 
Such were the essentials of kiva-construction; the details of interior arrangement 
vary greatly from one region to another, but are usually quite uniform for any 
given culture, thus providing a most useful criterion for classification. 

The Chaco Canyon ruins contain kivas of two sorts: great kivas, of which there 
seems to be but one, or at most two, at each village; and small kivas, of which every 
village has several. The great kiva is very large, measuring from forty to sixty feet 
in diameter (pi. 21). The lower part of its wall is encircled by a bench of masonry; 
near the middle of the floor is a raised fireplace, on either side of which is a rectan¬ 
gular, vault-like structure of masonry. The central part of the roof was supported by 
four large pillars. At the north side of each great kiva is a sort of antechamber, 
lying at a higher level, and reached by a ladder-like stairway. In most cases the 
kiva is surrounded by small rooms, also at a higher level, formed by partitions 
running out spokelike from the kiva proper to an outer wall surrounding it con¬ 
centrically.* 

The small kivas have not as yet been adequately described. Their diameter 
appears seldom to exceed twenty-five feet. Like the large structures they have a 
low bench about the base of the wall. On the bench are several (six to ten) small 
blocks of masonry a foot or so in height, set at equal distances apart, each one 
enclosing a short heavy beam which runs back into the main wall of the kiva.f In 

*Oiily three great kivas have so far been excavated, viz. at the Aztec ruin (see Morris, 1921, a, for a full descrip¬ 
tion, with discussion of function and relations); at Pueblo Bonito (see Judd, 1922, p. 322, photograph and plan); 
and at Chettro Kettle (see Hewett, 1922, pp. 121-128). 

fPepper, 1920, p. 251, and 6g. 104. 


TTIE SAN JUAN 


51 


the floor there is a central flrejiit, and under the sontli side of the wall runs the 
intake of the ventilator to open through the floor near the firei^it. To the west of the 
firepit is a single rectangular masonry-lined vault (see pi. 19, b, small kivas). The 
exact system of roofing is ]7rohlematical, but appears to have been by means of a 
cribwork of logs, as in iNIesa Verde kivas (see p. (>0 below, and ])1. '-28).* 

One of the many mysteries of the Cdiaco is the fact that in spite of {)ersistent 
search the cemeteries of the large ruins have never been found. The burial-mounds 
of the smaller and apparently earlier sites are obvious, and can easily be located; 
but the rubbish-heaps of Bonito, Chettro Kettle, and the other great communities 
contain no graves whatever. Although a few bodies have been taken from rooms,! 
these do not represent a hundredth part of the number of individuals that must 
have died during the occupancy of the towns. There is no hint of cremation, and so 
one can 6nl\’ snp])ose that the Uhacones differed from all other Pueblos of whom we 
have knowledge in that they buried their dead at a distance from their houses. 
AMien the cemeteries are eventually di.scovered, they shonhl yield a marvellously 
rich harvest of pottery, ornaments, and utensils. 

In the minor arts the ancient people of the Chaco were no less skilled than in 
architecture. Their work in wood, in stone, and in the weaving of cotton textiles is 
very superior, d'hey were remarkably expert in the making of turquoise beads and 
ornaments, and particularly in the jirodnction of inlav work on stone, bone, or wood 
with small bits of turquoise, jet, and shell.J The grooved stone axe is rare and, as 
elsewhere in the San Juan, is always jjoorly made. Although several types of sandals 
were produced, the finest and mo.st characteristic were woven of apocynum string. 
These sandals have pointed toes, and each one bears a small jog or offset on the 
outer edge (})1. 36, a).** This is also the case with INIesa Verde, Kayenta and other 
San Juan Pueblo period sandals, and provides a ready means of distinguishing them 
from the footgear of earlier ])eriods. 

Chaco C’anyon pottery, as found at the large ruins, forms a typical and easily 
identifiable group.ff The two principal wares are corrugated and black-on-white; 
redware apj)ears. but in .such small quantities that it may be disregarded in so 
general a summary as this. 

Most Southwestern pottery was made by laying u]3 on each other rings or 
spirals of clay, each added ring or turn of the spiral carrying the vessel wall a little 
higher. All trace of this process was usually obliterated before firing by working- 
over the surfaces of the vessels with the fingers or with a smoothing tool. At 
certain periods, however, the coiled spiral of clay was allowed to remain imobliter- 
ated on the exterior of ])ots, ])rodncing a horizontally ridged or corrugated effect. 

*A.s to the details of Chaco Canyon kiva construction little has so far been published, but these and other now 
puzzling features will soon be thoroughly understood, when the results of the excavations now being carried on by 
the National (Jeographic Society are published. 

fMoorehead, lOOb, p. .34; Pepper, 1909. 

JFor illustrations of many ('haco Canyon s[)ecinien.s see Pepper, 19*20. PI. 1, and figs, 50, 71-74 show ex¬ 
amples of turquoise and inlay work. 

**The specimen Bgured illu.strates the characteristic .shape. It is of yucca, no example of the fine apocynum 
sandal being available for reproduction. 

tflllustrations of ('haco ('anyon pottery are to be found in Pepper, 1900, 1909, 19-20; Moorehead, 1900; Chap¬ 
man, 1921; Coddard, 1921, p. 43. 


52 


S O U T H W E S T E R X A R C H A E O L O G Y 


Tile coils were furthermore often pinclietl and indented as they were ajiplied, giving 
a still more elaborate texture to the surface. This technique was normally used for 
the making of cooking pots.* Chaco Canyon corrugated ware is well made, the 
corrugations are nnnsnally sharp and clear-edged, the indentations vary in depth 
and arrangement to produce a variety of pleasing textures. As to vessel-shapes we 
have as yet few data, but the ])revailing form appears to have been a large jar with 
very wide mouth (fig. 7, a). 




a 


d 


Fig. 7. —Chaco (’anyon vessel-shape.s 


g 


Rlack-on-white ware, which in the Southwest is almost invariably associated 
with corrugated, occurs in many well-defined local varieties. Qualities common to 
all black-on-white groups are hardness, clear “ring” when struck, surface-slips 
running from light gray to pure white, and ]irevailingly geometric decoration in 
sharp black lines. 

The most marked characteristics of the Chaco Canyon variety of black-on- 
white ware are its very white, almost pajjer-white, slij) and the unusually fine lines 
of its black decoration. The commonest vessels are bowls, j^itchers, and ladles; rare 
but typical forms are human effigy ])ots and cylintlrical vases. 

The bowl (fig. 7, d; pi. 22, e-h) a])proaches the hemispherical in shape, with 
rounded bottom and curving sides. Examples over twelve inches in diameter are 
uncommon. The rim is “direct”, i.e.,not bent inward or flared outward; the actual 
lip is never flat-topped, but is rounded or even brought to a sharpish edge. The 
exteriors of bowls are undecorated and, indeed, are often left unslipped; or the slip 
is run down for an inch or two below the rim. The edge of the rim is painted black 
(this is a useful diagnostic trait for Chaco Canyon pottery); the black of the edge is 
often interrupted by a tiny space purposely left unpainted, and this space is 
sometimes emphasized by the turning down of the ends of the encircling line into 
little dashes or scrolls on the exterior. 


*For an excellent description of the manufacture of corrugated ware, see Holmes, 1886, p. '273. 
















PLATE 21 


2 - 



After Morris 



After Hewitt b Courtesy ‘^\rt and Archaeology” 

THK GREAT KIVA OF THE f’HACO CAXYON' CULTURE 

a. Plan of the Great Kiva at Aztec, h, The Great Kiva at Chettro Kettle. 


























THE SAN JUAN 


53 


Pitchers occur in two varieties, the large-hoclied and the small-bodied. Al¬ 
though intermediate forms appear, the small-bodied type (fig. 7, b; pi. 22, b-d) is the 
commoner and more characteristic. Exam])les run from five to eight inches in 
height. The neek is tall, either cylindrical or in the form of a truncated cone; the 
body is low (usually about one-third of the total height), with a rather sharply 
angled shoulder; the handle is a flat strip of clay running from just below the 
rim to just above the junction between neck and body; the rim is flatter than in 
bowls and is generally painted black. The large-bodied type (pi. 22, a; fig. 7, c) is a 
rounder, usually more capacious, vessel with a small handle. 

Ladles are either of the “bowl-and-handle” (fig. 7, e) or the “half gourd” 
tyi)e (fig. 7, f). 

Rarer forms, which appear to be confined to the Chaco Canyon culture, are the 
cylindrical vase (fig. 7, g)* and the effigy pot.f The large decorated olla or water 
jar seems to be much less common than in other black-on-white areas; I have never 
seen a specimen complete enough to give a good idea as to its shape. 

The decoration of all the black-on-white pottery of the Southwest is i)reponder- 
atingly geometric and rectilinear. Although the actual number of design elements 
employed is not great, they are handled in such a great variety of ways, and used in 
so many different combinations that a thoroughgoing analysis is necessary before 
one can really understand the system of ornamentation in any single group. Alost 
groups, however, possess certain characteristic features, certain earmarks, so to 
speak, which enable one after a little practice to recognize them at once. The 
earmarks of Chaco Canyon decoration are best shown by a few illustrations and 
explanatory notes. 

In plate 23 is j)resented a selection of typical Chaco Canyon black-on-white 
designs. The majority of them are band decorations that encircle the interiors of 
bowls. The bands may be made up of a repetition of identical units (pi. 23,f,g,h,i), 
or of an alternation of two different units (pi. 23, e). Most bands are framed 
above and below by a single black line. Very characteristic of Chaco Canyon work 
is the use of lines dotted along one side (pi. 23, e, h). The interlocking spiral in one 
form or another (pi. 23, g, h) is also abundant, as is the sharp-pointed “bat wing” 
figure (pi. 22, a, b; pi. 23, f, j). Large terraced elements are often outlined with a 
series of two to four or five thin black lines, which follow accurately the angles of 
the basic figure (pi. 22, g; pi. 23, a, b). Hatching is perhaps the best earmark of 
Chaco art; the individual lines used are narrow and often slightly wavy, and they 
are always framed in or enclosed by outer lines much heavier than themselves 
(pi. 22, a, d, e, h; pi. 23, c, d). All these qualities are much more clearly brought 
out by the illustrations than by any verbal description. The drawings also show 
that there are several quite distinct types of decoration: those based on the out¬ 
lined terrace-figure; those making use of interlocking scrolls; hatched ornaments, 
etc. Whether these were all contemijoraneous parts of a single design system 
or whether they represent successive phases of a changing system cannot be decided 
at present. Chapman’s studies of the sherds from a rubbish-filled kiva at Chettro 

*Pepper, 1920, phs. 2-(). 
t Pepper, 1906. 


54 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


Kettle, and Nelson’s stratigraphic work in the Pueblo Bonito middens, while not 
extensive enough for definite results, indicate that the ceramic art, even during the 
occupancy of the great pueblos, was not at a standstill.* The intensive excavations 
now being carried out by the National Geographic Society and the School of 
American Research will undoubtedly serve to answer this and many other per¬ 
plexing questions in regard to the Chaco Canyon ruins. 

The archaeology of Chaco Canyon presents many baffling problems. To begin 
with, the district is little better than a desert; many parts of it, indeed, are abso¬ 
lutely barren wastes of sand and rock which do not even sujjport the usual dry- 
country flora of the Southwest. It is almost devoid of springs, has no permanent 
streams, is subject to severe sandstorms, is blistering hot in snmmer and bitterly 
cold in winter. It is hard to see how life in the Chaco could have been anything but 
a continual struggle for bare existence. A^et in this harsh and difficult environment 
Pueblo culture reached its highest development. The towns are large, excellently 
constructed, and lie in close proximity to each other. If all of them had been 
inhabited at the same time, they might well have housed more than 10,000 people. 
But how so large a population could have supplied itself with the mere necessaries of 
life, and still had time and energy left for the development of so remarkable a 
civilization, has puzzled every observer who has visited the Chaco country. 

The explanation of course suggests itself that the climate of ancient times 
was moister than that of today. If such an hypothesis could be accepted, all our diffi¬ 
culties would be removed. The truth is, however, that no convincing evidence has 
yet been presented to warrant a belief in any marked climatic change in the South¬ 
west during the period of its occupancy by man. Those who, like Huntington,f 
have based their conclusions in large part upon the testimony of the ruins, have 
failed to realize the ability of the Pueblo Indian to support himself quite com¬ 
fortably in the face of conditions of dryness which would stagger the white farmer. 
Such investigators have not taken into consideration how little water the Pueblo 
Indian actually uses, how carefully he conserves his supply, or how little he thinks 
of climbing up and down steep, precipitous paths to get it. Furthermore, the 
modern Pueblo often lives many miles from his cornfields; and numbers of ancient 
ruins are situated at considerable distances from the nearest land which could ever 
have been cultivated even under the most favorable climatic conditions. One more 
point which is often not recognized is that the Indian farms only for himself and 
his family, while every modern cultivator helps to feed an enormous industrial 
population which produces no foodstuffs whatever; hence the acreage the white 
farmer must plant is vastly greater, and no comparison between the amount of 
cultivable land necessary for his support with that necessary for a Pueblo Indian 
can have any bearing on the subject. 

I think there is no ruin in the entire Southwest that one hundred years ago 
could not have been successfully reinhabited by Hopi Indians in numbers equal to 
its ancient population. I say one hundred years ago, because during the past 
century sheep and cattle have been extensively introduced, and have in many 

*Chapman, 1921; Nelson in Pepper, 1920, p. 383. 

IHuntington, 1912, 1914. 


PLATE 22 




Chaco Canyon Black-on-white ware 











/ 


THE SAN JUAN 55 

])laces so denuded tlie eountry of grass, and so stripped the soil of the binding 
protection of the grass-roots, that the formation of deep, water-cut gullies has 
everywhere resulted. The destructive action of such gullies is enormous; not only 
do they rapidly eat away the adobe earth of the valley bottoms, but they carry off 
the flood water, and also lower the ])lane of underground seepage to such an extent 
that the remaining land on either side of them becomes permanently parched. 

This very thing has happened in Chaco Canyon. In former times the spring 
rains and summer showers spread out evenly over the flat floor of the valley, de- 
j)ositing year by year layers of enriching silt, and penetrating and moistening the 
earth from toj) to bottom. Now, however, every drop of water is immediately 
diverted into a deej), steep-sided arroyo, which after every heavy rain becomes a 
raging torrent, undermining, cutting down, and carrying away more and more of the 
cultivable soil of the valley. 

Thus, the Chaco has recently become less favorable for agriculture than it was 
in former times, but even so it coidd never have furnished what one might call an 
ideal environment. Aly feeling is that the jjopulation of the valley was never over 
5,000 or 6,000 souls and that not more than four or five of the large towns were 
inhabited at any one time. This impression is due to the fact that each of the 
great ruins was obviously laid out and completed in a relatively short time and 
according to a j)reconceived plan. Some of them have been more or less extensively 
altered, and Bonito shows signs of much remodelling, but few appear to have 
grown slowly by the accretions of generation after generation of inhabitants. The 
small extent of the rubbish heaps, as well as the paucity of burials tend to confirm 
the belief that not more than one or two of these ruins was continuously occupied 
for more than, say, one hundred years. 

Definite answers to many of these questions will doubtless be ])rovided by the 
new methods of research now being applied by Judd and his associates. I should not 
present speculations on matters so soon to be cleared up, were it not for the fact 
that the remains of Chaco valley are so important for the study of other manifesta¬ 
tions of Southwestern culture, that a proper appreciation of the problems of the 
Chaco, is necessary for a true understanding of the archaeology of the rest of the 
area. 

The groups of great ruins that stand as the type of this culture are strung 
along the Chaco wash for a distance of some thirty miles. The easternmost of them, 
Pueblo Pintado, situated on the divide between the San Juan and Rio Grande 
drainages, marks the eastern limit, so far as is known, of the culture. To the south 
are no large ruins of Chaco type, but the characteristic pottery appears in col¬ 
lections made in the vicinity of Gallup, N. Al.* The Kintiel ruin on Leroux Wash 
in northeastern Arizona has been regarded as allied to the Chaco group ;t but 
although it shows distinct Chaco influence in architecture, the pottery found there 
by Fewkes and that observed by me on the surface are by no means typical of the 
Chaco culture. Not far from Kintiel, however, in the so-called Red Rock country 


*Specimens in the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Chaco influence is also to be seen in certain 
early kivas in the Zufii country (Hodge, 1923). 
fFewkes, 1904, p. 127. 


56 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


on Black Creek, sixteen miles south of Fort Defiance, Arizona, are sites which 
produce absolutely typical Chaco pottery;* as to the ruins we know nothing, but 
they are apparently not large. North from the Red Rocks is the Canyon de Chelley, 
a district notable for its abundance of cliff-houses. These dwellings have not been 
examined by archaeologists for many years, so that our knowledge of their pottery 
is confined to collections made by “pot-hunters”. In such collections are a few 
j)ieces of Chaco-like pottery, though that type is not the prevailing one. 

When we turn to the north we find clearer evidence for extentions of the 
culture. In many of the lots of pottery, excavated and sold to museums b}^ the 
commercial diggers of the nineties are pieces from JMontezuma valley, AIcElmo 
canyon and the mesas of southeastern Utah; among these are almost always to be 
found examples which more or less resemble Chaco vessels. These pots are seldom 
of the most pronounced Chaco types; they give one the impression of being either 
the product of a peripheral development affected by Chaco influence, or of an earlier 
and less specialized stage of the Chaco culture. Alorris has recently demonstrated 
that the great kiva with radiating rooms about it is an integral part of the Chaco 
Canyon system of architecture, and has called attention to the apparent extension 
of this kiva form across the Mesa Verde and west into the ^Montezuma Valley.f 
Although we do not know the exact provenience of the Chaco-like vessels in the 
])ot-hunters collections from this district, it is probable that both they and the 
great kivas may indicate a northwestern spread or a northwestern origin of the 
Chaco culture. 

In the northeast there is definite evidence of Chaco influence, shown by the 
architecture and ceramics of a ruin discovered by Jeancon in the Pagosa Springs 
region of Archuleta County, Colorado.* The actual building is not large, yet its 
masonry is distinctly Chacoan, and its kivas are of the same low-benched type as the 
small kivas of the Chaco; although not built in a radiating manner, there is a hint of 
great-kiva arrangement in the small rooms surrounding one of them.** 

The clearest and most interesting occurrence of Chaco culture outside the 
limits of the actual Chaco Canyon district is furnished by the great Aztec ruin. 
This site lies about sixty-five miles north of Pueblo Bonito on the lower waters of 
the Animas river, a northern tributary of the San Juan. The Aztec ruin is architec¬ 
turally a perfect example of a Chaco pueblo, not only in ground-plan but in the most 
minute details of construction. The pottery, however, from the surface of the 
mounds is equally typical of the ]\Iesa Verde culture. I formerly believed, as did 
Morris,ft that this indicated a hybrid settlement, but Alorris’s thorough excavations 
have resulted in the important discovery that Aztec was built and occupied by 
Chaco people, whose characteristic pottery he found in the lower strata of the 
rubbish; and was later reinhabited, apparently after a period of abandonment, by 

*('c)llection in Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. This district should not be confounded with the Red 
HcK'k country of the Verde river, described in FeAvkes, 189G. 

tMorris, 1921, a, p. 1.‘58. 

JJeancon, 1922, pp. 14 ff. 

♦♦Roberts, 1922, pi. 3. 

ttKidder-Guernse}’, 1919, p. 201; Morris, 1919, a, p. 10(5. 


PLATE 23 



Designs of Chaco Canyon Black-on-white ware 





































































































































































'.f.- .%. 

* ' i jjff ''' ^ ' y-:-:;; • - . yv. • 


■ 



« ' «i. 

W^*.^ * ' 

1- ♦* r * ^ 

^ i * tX • 


->'i , /•-, [.-,. y-,.. 

S**^X' • ‘ V ♦ • f ,* . • » I 

• Uf - i / - . ^ -.P'r - 

•v.' ' I 3 , ’ . '> 


r ■ -^ ri 

- i V<‘- I ’ 



‘ } 
\i 


*i 

■' a ^ 


4 \W: 

^ % Y- . < 

■K- 

■’ >.»t'4 > 


^ .., /T- 

.■' '---r’ .It "'•j J '“-yV-T 



r-. .g V . ^:^»^:' :• 

* I -I* I , . 


V 'rwij* - - .- . ’ ' ■■* 

>.- ' *:•'• .-.Okti' . , ... 

— ^ t.f- 

'■ ! ?• ' 

^ ' 

w / , ' . •“» 


'*' uS '.. 

... ■: 


- Jf- ■ 


/ 

k 


* » 


!& 


.dk^A 








PLATE 24 




CMFK I>AL.\(E, MESA VEHDE, COLORADO 

'J'he niaiiy round and square towers iueorporaled iu the huiltiinf,' are typical of the larger Mesa Verde cliff-houses. 




















r ^ ! 









» 


^ f • ^ ^•* 

fc ^♦<v f 9i 

il'». * 1- {. ‘ ‘ ^ 

1 .> J*' *•*■•», V. ' ) ., 

’ '•.^' ."' ■ V »*’; ‘ 

I * 'te 1^ ^ tA- 

* ' ^ 


1 **^ -t 


I 

J 

t 


^f.•"'■■' -J* 


•• -M 

, » • 


•r. 


a/ 







i£ 


/ 




rf %:s 

*•. #*-i. 







THE SAN JUAN 


57 

Alesa ^ erde colonists.* Ihus we can be certain that the Alesa Verde culture 
outlived the Chaco in the north at least, and it seems probable that it survived it 
generally, for in certain of the rooms excavated by Pepper at Pueblo Bonito 
there were found Mesa Verde ])otsherds, and these were in sufficient abundance to 
indicate that those rooms had actually been occupied for some time by Mesa Verde 
people at a time subsequent to the abandonment of the pueblo by its original 
builders. Ihe reoccupation coukl not have been extensive or prolonged, as Alesa 
^ erde sherds are not found about Bonito or any of the other Chaco ruins to the 
extent to which they occur at Aztec.f 

AMiile the above evidence shows that the Mesa Verde culture held on in the 
San Juan somewhat longer than did the Chaco Canyon civilization, it is equalh" 
certain that the former was not an outgrowth of the latter, but that the two more or 
less overlapped in time. This is ])roved by the finding by Nelson of jMesa Verde 
sherds in the middle strata of the Bonito rubbish heap.J 

We have so far concerned ourselves principally with the larger ruins which 
architecturally or ceramically, seem to belong to the Chaco Canyon culture. In the 
Chaco Canyon itself, however, and out from it in all directions to a distance not yet 
established by exploration, are other ruins, smaller in size, less elaborate architec¬ 
turally, and containing less highly specialized pottery. A few of the larger of these 
may well be of the true Chaco culture; but the majority are small, are very badly 
ruined, and as regards pottery are obviously different from the great dwellings. 
Their wares are corrugated and black-on-white. The corrugated is often very 
elaborately decorated with wavings and indentations of the coil; it is, in fact, in 
many ways the finest corrugated pottery of the entire Southwest. The black-on- 
white is hard to characterize, partly because so few well located whole pieces are 
available, partly because it seems to be of a generalized type vaguely resembling 
Chaco ware, but without any readily grasped peculiarities. As to the structure of 
these small ruins in and near the Chaco region, nothing is known, as none of them 
have yet been excavated. Alorris,** however, has demonstrated the presence of an 
early black-on-white Pueblo period in the San Juan, a period antedating that of the 
large ruins; and from his description of its characteristics (small houses, excellent 
coiled ware, etc.) it would seem that these little sites must belong to it, and must 
therefore represent a stage, in culture antecedent to that of the great Chaco pueblos, 
which would thus appear to have been the latest inhabited dwellings in the district. 
The studies of San Juan archaeology now being carried on by Alorris can con¬ 
fidently be expected to settle the age and affinities of these inconspicuous but most 
important sites. 


♦Morris, 19^21, a, p. 13G. 

fThe rooms in question are nos. 59, 88, 109 (see Pei)per, 1920, map. fig. 1.5o); the fact that they contained 
almost exclusively Mesa Verde sherds was noted during an examination of the Bonito collection in the .\meriean 
:Museum of Natural History, New York. I did not go over the entire collection, so that it is possible that the same 
conditions obtained in other rooms. I have inferred, on the analogy of the Aztec finds, that the Mesa \ erde sherds 
are of late date; but it is of course conceivable that the reverse may have been the case; .Judd’s excavations will 
undoubtedly clear up this important question of relative chronology. 

JPepper, 1920, p. 384. 

♦♦Morris, 1921. 


58 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


AIesa Verde 

The type-locality for this culture is the Alesa Verde, a large plateau in the 
drainage of the Alancos river in southwestern Colorado. This country is a much 
better one than the Chaco canyon. It is higher, nearer the mountains, and so 
receives considerably more rainfall in summer and more snow in winter. The top of 
the mesa supports a heavy growth of cedar and pinyon, in certain favorable spots 
there are good stands of spruce; springs are relatively abundant. The mesa is cut 
by a series of deep canyons, in the upper walls of which are many very large 
caves. Although a number of ruins are found on the level uplands of the plateau, 
the largest and most characteristic settlements are the great cliff-houses that are 
built in the shelter of the caves. Cliff Palace and Sprucetree House are excellent 
examples, which may well serve as types. 

The ground-plan of a cliff-house is naturally dependent upon the shape of the 
cave which contains it. Alost caves, not only in the Alesa Verde, but also through¬ 
out the sandstone formations of the Southwest in general, lie at the top of rocky 
talus. The floor sloj^es iqiward more or less stee])ly, and at the rear often flattens 
out to a semicircular j^latform hugging the back wall of the cave. The roof arches 
high overhead. 

AVhen such caves were used as village-sites the first houses were naturally 
built along the flatter portions of the rear platform, then the irregular places were 
levelled up and utilized, and finally terraces were constructed upon the sloping 
front floor to provide still further space for foundations. Because of the cramped 
conditions room was often piled on room, sometimes clear to the roof of the caves, 
the buildings reaching a height of several stories. So strongly does the structure of 
such caves influence the shapes of the buildings that it has been thought that the 
jjeculiar crowded room-grouping and terraced arrangement typical of pueblo 
architecture must have originated in the cliff-houses.* 

The accompanying ground-plan (fig. 8) is that of Cliff Palace, one of the largest 
known cliff-dwellings. It contains about ninety-five ground-floor rooms and twenty- 
three kivas, the former clustering about the rear of the cave, the latter lying in 
general to the front (])!. 24). This is the normal arrangement in cliff-houses both on 
the Alesa Verde and elsewhere. 

The masonry of Cliff Palace is typical of the other Alesa Verde ruins. It is 
much less massive than Chaco stonework, but is composed of larger individual 
stones (pi. 20, b), often hewn to shape, carefully coursed, and brought to an even 
surface on the face of the wall by a pecking process that results in a characteristic 
dimpled texture. Rooms are more irregular in shape and smaller in size than those 
of the Chaco ruins; they appear to have been added on as needed. Alesa AVrde 
villages seem always to have started in a modest way and grown by accretion; I do 

*Cushing, 1886, p. 479. The arguments advanced are very convincing. This is, however, a question which 
involves the entire history of pueblo architecture. It cannot be discussed in the present paper, but it may be 
pointed out that there surely was no such thing as a true cliff-dwelling period, when all houses were built in caves. 
The cave, as a house-site, has always been the e.xception rather than the rule; and while cave occupation may have 
had some influence on the form of pueblo dwellings, their basic peculiarities will, I feel sure, eventtially be traced to 
other .sources. 


THE SAN JUAN 


59 



not know of a single large secular building of this culture that gives evidence of 
having been erected at one time and according to a preconceived plan. 

The Mesa Verde kivas are fairly uniform in size, and in the details of interior 
arrangement. They average about thirteen feet in diameter. All of them are 
either actually subterranean or, if the exigencies of the site will not permit that, are 
surrounded by retaining walls, packed about with earth and so put technically at 
least underground (pi. 28; reference should be had to this plate and to fig. 11 to 
make clear the details of the following description). It was evidently a strict 
requirement that kivas should be below the surface, and in essence all of them are 
merely holes in the ground lined with masonry. Orthodoxy no less stringent is 









60 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


seen in construction. The typical kiva is as nearly round as its builders could make 
it. At about three feet from the floor the wall is set back a foot or more, thus 
leaving a narrow bench encircling the room. On this bench are built six masonry 
pilasters two to three feet high. Their tops come to within two or three feet of the 
surface. The pilasters produce in the upper wall of the chamber six broad recesses. 
All the recesses are of ecpial width, but the southernmost is very much deeper than 
the others. The roof is made by laying short beams from pilaster to pilaster all 
around the kiva; a second set of beams is then laid across the angles made by the 
first set. By such crib work the structure is gradually extended upward, and drawn 
together into a domed roof, which is completed by horizontal beams laid across the 
remaining opening, but leaving space for a combined ladder-hole and smoke-vent.* 

Just outside the back wall of the deep south recess a small flue leads vertically 
down. When it reaches the level of the kiva floor it turns inward, runs under the 
floor of the recess, and opens into the chamber itself. An imaginary line drawn 
straight across the floor from the mouth of the ventilator bisects the other standard 
kiva appurtenances. First, and lying two to three feet from the ventilator opening, 
comes a wall-like erection of masonry or wattlework, two or three feet wide and of 
about the same height. This evidently acted as a screen or deflector to prevent the 
draught which is sucked down the flue from blowing too directly upon the fire, as 
well as to distribute the air more generally through the room. Behind the de¬ 
flector is the firepit, a round depression, with a coping of adobe which rises a little 
above the floor level. Lastly, still in the same line, and usually situated about 
half-way between the firepit and the north wall of the kiva is a carefully made little 
hole, round, three or four inches in diameter and five or six inches deep. This has 
been identified with the sipapu or symbolical entrance to the underworld found in 
Hopi kivas.f Such is the normal kiva of the Alesa Verde culture. Alinor variations 
are found, but in general the type is very strictly adhered to even in the smallest 
details. 

Besides living rooms and kivas most large dwellings of the Alesa Verde culture 
contain one or more tower-like structures (pi. 24). These may be round, oval. 
D-shaped, or rectangular in ground-plan. Their exact function is not understood; 
many of them were doubtless ceremonial in nature; but from the fact that they are 
often loopholed in such a way as to command by archery the ajjproaches to the 
villages, they are usually referred to as watch-towers. Not only do towers occur 
in the cliff-houses and pueblos, but very commonly they are found at a distance 
from the larger settlements, occupying points easily defended and having a wide 
outlook over the surrounding country.^ 

As was the case at the Chaco ruins, the cemeteries of the large Mesa Verde 


*Fewkes, 1920, figs. 54, 55, gives photographs of models that illustrate very clearly the roofing of Mesa Verde 
kivas. See also Fewkes, 1908. 

fBy Fewkes, who was the first to study inten.sively the kivas of prehistoric ruins, work out their roofing 
system and explain the true significance of the ventilator and deflector (see Fewkes, 1908 and 1920). Richard 
Wetherill, however, evidently lecognized the purpose of the ventilating apparatus, as he calls the deflector a 
“wind-wall” (1894, p. 288). 

JFor a di.scussion of the functions of towers see Fewkes, 1919. Certain isolated ceremonial buildings, of which 
“Sun Temple” and “Fire Temple” are examples, are described by P'ewkes (1916 and 1921). 


PLATE 25 





After Morris 


Courtesy Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 


Plack-on-white howls of the Mesa \erde culture 









i 




• > 



.n 





f 



THE S A N J U A N 


61 


dwellings have never been located. Although a few burials have turned up in 
rubbish hea])s, in sealed rooms, and under floors, as well as a few among the rocks of 
the talus slopes below the houses, not enough have been discovered to account for a 
hundredth part of the bodies which must have been disposed of. Dr. Fewkes found 
in Cliff Palace some evidence of cremation,* but in view of the rarity of this 
practice in the San Juan drainage, it does not seem to me conclusive enough to 
discourage further efforts to locate cemeteries. 

1 he minor arts of the ]\Iesa \ erde culture have been well described by Norden- 
skiold, Fewkes, and Morris.f In most ways they do not appear to differ greatly 
from the minor arts of Chaco Canyon, although in general there is less richness of 
materials, and less perfection of workmanship. The decorated pottery, however, is 
entirely distinct, even small sherds being easily distinguishable.J 

J he wares are corrugated, black-on-white, and a very small percentage red. 

Corrugated vessels are of two sorts: large jars with wide mouths and egg- 
shaped bodies (fig. 9, b), and small ]>itcher-like jugs with single handles. The 
workmanship of the large jars is very fine; the walls are thin, the corrugations 
regular, the indentations evenly spaced, and the proportions remarkably sym¬ 
metrical. 

]Mesa C erde black-on-white ware may be recognized by its clear, pearly, 
grayish-white slip, which seems to have a certain softness and “depth” not found in 
other groups. The surface of the vessels is carefully polished, so highly in some 
cases as to produce a distinct gloss. There are four standard sharpes: ollas, bowls, 
mugs, ladles; less common vessels are kiva-jars, pitchers, seed-jars, and canteens. 

The Mesa Verde olla (fig. 9, g) is generally twelve to fourteen inches high; it 
has a full, globular body and short cylindrical neck; at or slightly below the point of 
greatest diameter is set a pair of horizontally placed loop handles, which almost 
always tend to rake slightly downwards. 

Bowls run from three to four inches up to fourteen or even fifteen inches in 
diameter. The smaller examjjles usually have rather flat bottoms and steeply 
rising sides; the larger pieces, those ten inches or more in diameter, show no distinct 
change in angle between sides and bottom, there being a very even curve from rim 
to rim (fig. 9, a; pi. 25). The ware is usually a full quarter of an inch thick, and this 
thickness of the vessel wall is carried clear to the edge without any thinning or 
bevelling. Thus a very square, fiat rim is produced, which is one of the most 
characteristic features of Mesa Verde bowls. 

Mugs (fig. 9, d) are in shape much like small German beer “steins”. They are 
three to six or seven inches high, have flat bottoms and straight or slightly bulging 
sides that converge somewhat toward the orifice. The single flat handle with which 
these mugs are always provided, runs from just above the base to a point a trifle 
below the rim. The rim is usually square, as in the case of the larger bowls. Mugs 
range from three and one-half to six inches in height. 

*Fewkes 1910; and 1911, pp. 39 and 77. 

tNordenskiold, 1893; Fewkes, 1909, 1911, a; 1916, a; Morris, 1919. 

iCood illustrations of Mesa Verde type pottery are to he found in: Xordenskiold, 1893; Morley, 1908; Fewkes, 
1909, 1911, a, 192:2; Prudden, 1914; Morris, 1915, 1919. -» 


62 


SOU T H W E S T E R N A R C H A E O L O G Y 


Ladles are apj^arently exclusively of the “bowl-and-handle” variety (fig. 9, c); 
each one has a small, complete bowl three to four and one-half inches in diameter, 
to the outside of which is luted a handle six to eight inches long. The handle is 
usually round and almost always hollow; sometimes it contains tiny pebbles or 
balls of clay, which act as rattles. I know of no case of the “half-gourd” ladle 
having been found in association with true Mesa Verde ware. 

Of the less common forms, the vessel for which I suggest the name kiva-jar is 
interesting because it seems to occur only in Alesa Verde sites or in sites obviously 
related to the Mesa Verde culture. Kiva-jars vary greatly in size, running from 
six to eighteen inches in diameter, but in shaj^e they are very uniform (fig. 9, f). 



The body is of flattened spherical form, with a rouiul orifice three to three and one- 
half inches in diameter on the top. The distinguishing feature is a ridge one-fourth 
to three-fourths of an inch high, which so encircles the orifice as to leave between it 
and the ridge a narrow ledge for the reception of a cover or lid. Aliich the same 
practice is followed in making our modern teapots and sugar bowls. With each jar 
is usually found its lid, a neatly made pottery disc with a small knob or loop for a 
handle. The name kiva-jar is applied to these vessels because the great majority of 
them have been found in ceremonial rooms. 



















PLATE 26 



Designs of Mesa Verde Black-on-wliite ware 




































































THE SAN JUAN 


63 


Seed-jars are called “heart-shaped bowls” by Holmes,* a misleading term, as 
the objects are not bowls at all. “Seed-jar” is, perhaps, little better, but the 
vessels have often been found containing seeds, and it is possible that this may have 
been their primary purpose. They average about seven inches in height by eleven 
inches in diameter, and are characterizetl by a rounded bottom; they grow gradually 
larger toward the top, and the greatest diameter is usually near the greatest height. 
The top is flattish, but not truly flat, and the orifice small. The walls are sometimes 
depressed to the mouth, sometimes slightly raised, but there is in no case any trace 
of neck or lip. Some examples show a set of four, six, or eight small holes about the 
mouth, which seem to have served for suspending the vessels. 



Fig. 10. Exterior decorations of Mesa Verde bowls 


The canteen is a small spherical vessel seven or eight inches high, with short, 
raised neck and very small orifice. Two small loop handles, one on either side of the 
neck, served for the attachment of a carrying string. In the National Museum 
there is a specimen from Sprucetree House with a yucca cord still in place.f 

The decoration of Mesa Verde black-on-white ware is, with the exception of 

♦Holmes, 1880, p. 306. See pi. 34, c, for an illustration of a seed-jar. 
tFewkes, 1909, pi. 20, b. 




64 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


certain zooinorphic figures on bowl-exteriors (fig. 10), pretty strictly geometric. 
It is nevertheless bold and free. Large, striking elements are used, and the contrast 
between them and the clear, pearly-white sli]D is very pleasing. The earmarks 
of Alesa Verde design are: the use of balanced sets of framing lines above and below 
band decorations (pi. 26), the prevalence of patterns, either continuous (pi. 25, c, f) 
or of repeated units (fig. 10; pi. 25, b), on bowl exteriors, and the common occur¬ 
rence of large designs in solid black and hatching which cover the entire interiors 
of bowls (pi. 25, c, e). Mesa Verde hatching may be distinguished from that of 
Chaco Canyon by the coarser quality of the com])onent lines, and by the fact that 
the lines which edge the hatched areas are of approximately the same weight as the 
hatching lines; whereas in Chaco Canyon work the bordering lines are much heavier 
than the hatching itself (compare pi. 25, e, and pi. 22, e, h). The normal pattern, 
however, is the band (pi. 26); it is seldom if ever panelled, but is occupied by a 
repetition of a single unit or pair of opposed units, these elements being almost 
always some form of triangle or key-figure. 

The foregoing description of the Alesa Verde culture is based on the study of 
the architecture and pottery of the cliff-houses and pueblos of the Mesa Verde 
])roper. Similar ruins are found in abundance along the Mancos river and in its 
eastern tributaries. The Aztec jiueblo and the Bloomfield ruin were occupied by 
IMesa Verde people subsequent to their abandonment by their original Chaco 
tenants; and Mesa Verde pottery appears in certain rooms of Pueblo Bonito. 
These seem to mark the eastern and southern limits of the culture, nor was there any 
extension of it to the north. When we turn to the west, however, we find many 
IMesa ^Yrde remains. 

West of the Mesa Verde and extending as far as the Colorado river, there is a 
great stretch of upland covered by cedar and pinyon, drained by the following north¬ 
ern tributaries of the San Juan: the McElmo, Montezuma Creek, Recapture, and 
Cottonwood Canyons, and Grand Gulch. These tributaries and the mesas lying 
between them are literally crowded with ruins of all sorts; there are probably more 
archaeological sites to the square mile in this district than in any other equal area in 
the entire Southwest. LTnfortunately the study of the antiquities of the district i« 
still very incomplete; and were it not for the work of Prudden and Fewkes we 
should know next to nothing about it. A certain number of ruins, however, may 
safely be classed as of Mesa Verde type, and many others are of a type somewhat 
less well-marked but which may nevertheless be considered as bearing a close rela¬ 
tionship to the Mesa Verde culture. 

Of the definitely Mesa Verde settlements a good example is the Cannonball 
l)ueblo, near the junction of the AIcElmo and the Yellow Jacket. It occupies a site 
of a kind very frequently chosen for habitations of late period in the northern San 
Juan country, namely the rimrock about the head of a stee])-walled canyon. The 
ruins consist of two houses, one on either side of the canyon-head, and a square 
tower perched on the top of a large rock in the canyon itself. One of the two main 
houses was excavated by Morley, and proved to consist of some thirty ground-floor 
rooms, a round tower, and seven kivas. In its masonry, its kiva construction, and 


platp: 27 



a 



a. I’^ot()-^^esa Verde pottery. 


b 

b. Towers in Hiiin (’anyon, I tali. 










ttHs 




THE SAN JUAN 


65 


its pottery the Cannonljall pueblo closely resembles the type ruins of the Mesa 
Verde.* 

Of the many other sites in the neighborhood of the junction of the McElino, 
the Vellow Jacket, and the Hovenweep, very little is actually known. They have 
often been described, but no investigator has so far paid any attention to their 
pottery, the best criterion for the classification of unexcavated ruins. Lacking such 
evidence we must turn to architecture. The most characteristic features of pure 
Mesa Verde construction are, it seems to me, the block-stone masonry and the use 
of round, rectangular, or D-shaped towers. I exclude the six-pilastered kiva, for 
that structure, as will be shown presently, is also found in ruins of slightly different 
type; kivas, too, can seldom be examined without excavation. 

Losing block-stone masonry and the presence of towers as criteria, we are led to 
believe that a number of sites in this district should be classed as of Mesa Verde 
culture. Among them are the Yellow Jacket spring ruin, ruins in Hovenweep, 
Bridge, Holly, and Square Tower Canyons (pi. 27, b), and a large site just below the 
confluence of the McElmo and the Yellow Jacket. The westernmost example of 
the type, far as I know, is a pueblo at the head of an unnamed canyon which runs 
into Montezuma Creek from Alkali Ridge. 

Proto-Mesa Verde ruins. This term is tentatively used to designate a large and 
very important class of ruins which are in many ways similar to typical Mesa Verde 
structures, yet differ from them in being in most respects less highly developed. 

These dwellings were first recognized and described by Prudden.f The house 
(fig. 11 and pi. 28) consists of a single or double row of one-story rooms. Some¬ 
times there are also short right-angled wings extending outward from either end. 
Directly south of the house lies a kiva; and south of the kiva is a rubbish-heap 
burial mound. Prudden observed that groups of this nature were very abundant in 
the northern San Juan country between the Mesa Verde in Colorado and Comb 
Wash in Utah; and that they were normally built in unencumbered situations in 
open country, as on mesa tops or in broad valleys. He further noticed that the 
characteristic unit, consisting of a series of living-rooms, a kiva, and a burial mound, 
was employed in the construction of certain very much larger settlements, each of 
which appeared to be merely a consolidation or grouping together of a number of the 
villages; and, finally, that the latest and most highly developed structures of the 
San Juan, such as Cliff Palace and Pueblo Bonito were also laid out on the same 
general plan as the little mesa-top hamlets. He accordingly called the small 
houses “unit-type” dwellings, and advanced the theory that they represented the 
unit or germ of the characteristic pueblo method of house-building. 

It was natural to suppose that if the unit-type ruins were at the bottom, so to 
speak, of the ladder, they would prove to be at least fairly primitive in such 
important features as kiva-construction and pottery. Prudden excavated several 
unit-type ruins, and from the published results^! the surprising fact appears that far 
from being primitive the kivas are as uniform in plan, and as highly specialized in 


*See Morley, 1908. 
fPrudden, 1903, p. 234. 
jPnidden, 1914 and 1918. 


iiiiiLmisa: 


66 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 



Fig. 11. Ground-plan of unit-type dwelling. After Prudden. 


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PLATE 29 



b 

K-\YEXTA CLIKF-HOUSES 

a, A corner of Retatakin. b, Eastern end of Kietsiel, Sagi Canyon, northern Arizona. 


























•f 







. A 


.I' 




fi 


V 




4 


THE SAN JUAN 


67 


details, as any kivas known; while the pottery bears strong resemblance to that of 
the great ruins of the IMesa Vertle, 

This maturity” of the unit-type was to me at first very perplexing, but 
further consideration leads to the belief that Prndden’s original thesis, that the 
unit-type holds the germ of true Pueblo architecture, is correct. It really serves to 
explain many hitherto puzzling phenomena and to emphasize the extreme im¬ 
portance of the role that the San Jnan has played in the cultural history of the 
Southwest. We must, however, be ready for the discovery of still more primitive, 
yet typically Puebloan, villages in the San Juan area. Discussion of this question 
must be deferred until the rest of the evidence has been presented. 

The unit-ty])e ruins excavated by Prudden proved to be built of masonry much 
less perfect than that seen in the large pueblos and cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde 
and in the canyon-head settlements of the AIcElmo. The kivas were uniformly 
six-pilastered, with deep southern recess, ventilator, deflector, firepit, and sipapu 
(fig. 11 and pi. 28). One feature which is rare in the kivas of the Mesa Verde 
culture"^ is present in all the unit-type examples excavated by Prudden, namely an 
underground passageway running back from the north recess and opening upwards 
through a manhole into one of the adjacent rooms of the dwelling. 

The pottery is corrugated and black-on-white, with a very small percentage of 
red. The black-on-white vessels resemble in shape those of the Mesa Verde; there 
is the olla with down-raking handles, the bowl-and-handle ladle, and the mug 
(pi. 27, a). The kiva-jar also occurs. The bowls, however, tend to have steeper 
sides, less pronouncedly squared rims, and much less of exterior decoration. The 
designs are not so involved, and certain typical Mesa Verde elements, such as the 
split and toothed triangle (pi. 26, f), are rare or absent. 

Unit-type sites complying with these general specifications are found, as 
Prudden says, most commonly from the Mesa Verde to Comb Wash. It is possible 
that they are present on the Mesa Verde itself, and I have record of a similar ruin on 
the mesa between White Canyon and Grand Gulch. South of the San Juan the 
type appears to change, ceramically at least; but the architecture of the small 
dwellings in the open of that region is very little known, no excavations in them 
having as yet been published. 

Of larger aggregations, formed of several unit-type houses gathered together, 
there seem to be numbers north of the San Juan. Such settlements are easily 
distinguishable from the compact Mesa Verde type pueblos that occur in the same 
range, by the fact that they are usually built in the open country rather than about 
canyon-heads, by their straggling arrangement, mediocre masonry, lack of towers, 
and particularly by their somewhat less specialized pottery. Excavations have 
only been carried out in a single instance, at a large ruin on Alkali Ridge, Monte¬ 
zuma Creek, Utah. Here the grouping together of a number of unit-types is very 
clear, the pueblo being made up of sets of living rooms, each set having its own 


*Seen only in Kiva A of Cliff Palace and Kiva D of Sprucetree House, Fewkes, 1919, p. 42, note 2; absent 
from Cannonball ruin. 


68 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


kivas and burial mounds.* The kivas are identical with Prudden’s, even to the 
passage running back from the north recess.! 

To sum lip; in country occupied by typical iMesa Verde sites there occur many 
small unit-type settlements, and a number of larger ones composed of several unit- 
types loosely amalgamated. The kivas are very uniform in construction, more so, 
indeed, than in true Mesa Verde dwellings; the masonry is inferior to that of the 
Mesa Verde houses and the pottery is somewhat less specialized. It is difficult to 
escape the conclusion that the three classes: unit-type, multiple unit type. Mesa 
Verde type, are all parts of a single cultural sequence of which the Mesa Verde 
remains are the culmination. Hence the term proto-Mesa Verde, used to describe 
the first two stages, is perhaps justifiable; the truth, however, can only be ascer¬ 
tained by more detailed comparative studies, supported if possible by stratigraphic 
evidence. 

There are other ruins in the area which we have been considering that 
appear to belong to a still earlier period. They are low, inconspicuous mounds, 
sprinkled with fragments of archaic looking pottery. No excavation has been 
done in any of them, but in general appearance their wares seem to be allied to 
those of the small, old sites of the Chaco country.! 

Kayenta 

South of the San Juan and west of the Chinlee there is a broad stretch of sandy 
desert. Still further to the west the land rises in a succession of high mesas, finally 
culminating in the round-topped mass of Navajo Mountain. The country is 
remarkably rugged, gashed with numberless rock-walled gorges, cut across by great 
jagged black dykes, and dotted over with buttes carved by erosion into the most 
fantastic forms. These uplands, though comparatively dry, receive more rainfall 
and contain more springs than do the lower flats along the San Juan. 

Near the edge of the mesas lies the trading post of Kayenta, Arizona, and 
within a distance of fifteen or twenty miles from it are found the large ruins which 
mark the culmination of the Kayenta culture. The type-locality is Sagi Canyon, a 
tributary of Laguna Creek, which in turn empties, when it has water to empty, into 
the Chinlee. 

The sites are both cliff-houses and pueblos, but, as was the case on the Mesa 
Verde, the cliff-houses have been more thoroughly worked, and are better known 
than the pueblos. The largest are Kietsiel (fig. 12 and pi. *29, b) and Betatakin 
(pi. 29, a), the former containing about one hundred and fifty, the latter about 
one hundred ground-floor rooms. 

The architectural differences between these dwellings and the ones previously 
considered are numerous and important. The masonry is inferior in finish, being 
composed of irregularly shaped stones not very accurately coursed, and laid up with 

♦Kidder, 1910, fig. 2. 

fThis feature was not recognized as such during the original excavation, and is therefore not mentioned in the 
report; in my field notes I find reference to a “hole in the earth” which is surely such a passage. 

JA preliminary account of such a site, “Pipe Shrine House” on the Mesa Verde, has just appeared (Fewkes 
1923). 


PLATE 30 



Cmirtesy Peabody Museum 











THE SAN JUAN 


69 


a great deal of adobe mortar (pi. 20, c); wattlework walls, rarely seen on the Mesa 
\ erde and in the Chaeo, are relatively common. The round towers, which add so 
much picturesqiieness to the IMesa Verde cliff-houses, do not appear. 

The greatest difference is seen in the kivas. Those of Kietsiel have not been 
excavated, but from surface indications seem to be round, semi-subterranean rooms 
without pilasters, and to have a single deep recess with a ventilating shaft opening 
behind it (see fig. 12). A second type of ceremonial chamber is a square above¬ 
ground apartment, entered by a door in one of the short walls, and containing a 
deflector (to cut off the draft from the door, there being no ventilating apparatus). 



Fig. l!2. Ground-plan of Kietsiel cliff-house, Sagi Canyon, Arizona. 


and a firepit. Fewkes suggests calling such structures “kihus”.* Kietsiel contains 
both kivas and kihus; Betatakin, on the other hand, has only kihus, while Bat- 
Woman House has nothing but round kivas. The ceremonial room situation, in the 
larger Kayenta sites at least, is a difficult one to understand, particularly as the 
pottery from all these ruins appears to be of exactly the same type.f 

There also exist large surface sites with pottery that seems to be of normal 
Kayenta types. Those in Alarsh Pass alone have so far been investigated.^ 
They are loose aggregations of houses, each house consisting of a block fifty to 
one hundred feet long, made up of a single or double row of two-story rooms. 
The masonry, which is superior to that of the cliff-houses just described, is 
composed of large stones, fairly well coursed. The kivas of these surface pueblos 
are round and subterranean, with firepit, ventilator, and deflector, but without 

*Fewkes, 1911, p. 15, note a. No plans or drawings of kihus have been published; the only descriptions are in 
Fewkes, 1911, pp. 14, 15, 17, and pi. 14; see also Cummings, 1915, p. 277. 

tProfessor Cummings has done a great amount of work in this district; the publication of his notes will throw 
much light on many now obscure problems. 

JCummings, 1910, p. 28; Fewkes, 1911, p. 10; Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, p. Cl. 











70 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


pilasters. They lie near the houses, but unlike the Alesa \ erde and Chaco Can¬ 
yon kivas, are not incorporated in the house-clusters. 

No burials have been discovered in the large Kayenta cliff-houses, but a 
number of interments of the same period came to light during the writer’s excava¬ 
tions at the surface pueblos of Marsh Pass. The bodies were placed in oval grave- 
pits dug in the rubbish deposits near the houses; they were closely flexed, and were 
usually accompanied by mortuary pottery.* 

In view of the apparent complexity of the archaeological conditions in these 
large ruins, and the present difficulty of recognizing characteristic architectural 
traits, it is a relief to turn to the pottery, where the types are well-marked, and 



easily distinguishable from those of any other region in the entire San Juan drainage. 
The following brief description is based on specimens from Kietsiel, Betatakin, and 
the surface pueblos of Marsh Pass.f 

The wares are corrugated, polychrome, and black-on-white. 

The corrugated ware is somewhat inferior in execution to that of Mesa Verde 
and Chaco Canyon. The coils are less regular in width, and are sometimes not 
carefully indented. Only one or two whole jars have been recovered; they are fat, 
round-bodied pots with large apertures (fig. 13, b), quite different in shape from the 
graceful corrugated vessels of Mesa Verde (fig. 9, b) and of the proto-Kayenta 
sites.J 

*Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, pp. 65-70. 

fSo little material from the large Kayenta ruins has found its way into museums that the classification here 
given is necessarily tentative. 

fCf. Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, pi. 58, g, h. 



















PLATE 31 



Designs of Kayenta Black-on-white ware 



























































9 




THE SAN JUAN 


71 


Black-on-white is characterized by fine, hard paste, clear, white slip, and 
excellence of decoration. The common vessels are ollas, bowls, ladles, and colanders. 
Much less common forms are small handled jugs similar to those of polychrome 
ware, and seed-jars. Cylindrical mugs, tall pitchers, and kiva-jars do not, ap¬ 
parently, occur at all except as trade-pieces. 

1 he large Kayenta olla is exceedingly rare in collections, but from an examina¬ 
tion of the sherds at Kietsiel and Betatakin, it is obvious that many such vessels 
were in use. Our outline (fig. 13, g) is from Holmes.* The flattish upperbody 
appears to be typical. A second variety with more sloping shoulders was also made 
(pi. 30, g). There are no handles, nor do handles ever appear, as far as I can dis¬ 
cover, on any Kayenta olla. A small flat-topped olla (fig. 13 c) appears to be fairly 
common. 

Bowls are approximately hemispherical, run from four or five up to twelve or 
thirteen inches in diameter, and have either straight (fig. 13, f) or slightly out- 
curved rims (fig. 13 a). The larger examples tend to be deeper in proportion to 
width and to lack the outcurved rim. A single horizontally-placed loop-handle is a 
common feature of Kayenta bowls (fig. 13, f; pi. 30, d, f), and is never, or almost 
never, seen on bowls of any other black-on-white group. Decoration is confined to 
the interior. 

Ladles are all of the “bowl and handle” variety (fig. 13, d). They average 
nine inches long. The handle may be either a solid bar, a hollow tube, or, less 
commonly, an elongated loop of clay. 

The colander is a little seed-jar-shaped vessel three to six inches in diameter 
with a fairly large orifice (fig. 13, e; pi. 30, a). Each one has a nnmber of small 
holes in the bottom (pi. 30, b), evidently fitting it for use as a sifter or strainer. The 
colander is confined, so far as I know, to the Kayenta culture. 

The decoration of Kayenta black-on-white pottery is very elaborate. As the 
illustrations (pis. 30, 31) show, the most marked characteristic is the close-set 
arrangement of the elements. Little of the white background is allowed to appear, 
and the drawing of the interlocking frets, keys and spirals is often extraordinarily 
accurate. The use of an underframework, so to speak, of parallel or cross-hatched 
lines is the best earmark of this ware. In the finest examples the cross-hatching 
gives a sort of mosquito-bar effect. 

Polychrome pottery is abundant at Kietsiel, Betatakin, and the surface pueblos 
of Marsh Pass. It occurs in the form of bowls and small, handled jars; polychrome 
ollas, ladles, or seed-jars seem not to have been made. The base color of this ware is 
yellow or orange, and the decoration is applied in black, red, and white. 

Polj^chrome bowls average about ten inches in diameter, but examples as large 
as fourteen inches across are occasionally met with. Most bowls have outcurving 
rims and bear a single horizontal handle on the upper part of the exterior. Exterior 
ornament is confined to one or two heavy, carelessly drawn lines that encircle the 
bowls just below the rim. The interior designs (pi. 32) are almost without excep¬ 
tion of the “all-over” type; that is to say, they cover, more or less completely, the 

*1886, fig. 327. The exact provenience of this specimen is unknown, but it is of sound Kayenta type. 


7^2 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


entire inner surface of the pieces. The framework of all the designs is made up of 
broad red bands outlined in black, often having a second outlining of chalky white 
pigment. The simplest figures consist of the bands alone (pi. 32, a, b). In some¬ 
what more elaborate examples the bands bear angular projections or terminal key 
figures (pi. 32, d). The most ornate and perhaps the most typical specimens have 
supplementary decoration painted in black over the yellow background between 
the red bands (pi. 32, c, e, f). This supplementary decoration is characteristic of 
the group and is generally carried out in the following manner: the spaces to be 
ornamented are filled with a coarse hachure of parallel lines; while this may com¬ 
pletely fill the field, the lines are usually divided into groups of from three to eight 
or ten, and the small interspaces thus produced are occupied by elements of a 
different nature, of which by far the most common are stepped lines (pi. 32, c, f). 

The range of the Kayenta culture as indicated by the distribution of the above 
characteristic wares includes, of course, the type localities near Kayenta: Marsh 
Pass and Sagi Canyon. How far it may have extended to the north and west we do 
not know, though it is not probable that in these directions it ever overstepped to 
any great extent the formidable barrier of the Colorado river. There appears to 
have been little or no eastward spread. To the south a few pieces of Kayenta 
pottery appear in collections from Canyon de Chelley.* To the southwest, however, 
in the neighborhood of the Hopi towns, there are ruins which produce typical 
Kayenta black-on-white ware.j The same sort of material crops up in the neighbor¬ 
hood of San Francisco Mountain, and on the Little Colorado at Black Falls and 
above.J 

Proto-Kayenta sites. In the same region which contains the great Kayenta 
ruins, such as Kietsiel and Betatakin, and also spreading out over a much more 
extensive sweep of territory, are many sites, mostly small pueblos and cliff-houses, 
obviously allied in some way to the great ruins, but lacking certain of the traits 
which are most characteristic of them. The strongest likenesses are seen in the 
mediocre masonry with its copious use of adobe, in the variability and character¬ 
lessness of the kivas, and in the prevalence of colored pottery. The differences, 
aside from the smaller size of the dwellings, lie in the absence of the rectangulaiy 
ceremonial room, or kihu, and in the less specialized nature of the pottery. 

What may be called proto-Kayenta pottery appears in four varieties: corru¬ 
gated, red, polychrome, and black-on-white. The corrugated vessels are distinctly 
better made than those of the typically Kayenta sites, the ollas are taller, more 
gracefully shaped, and the corrugations themselves much sharper, more evenly 
spaced, and more carefully indented.** The redware, which is possibly lacking and 
certainly less common in the true Kayenta sites, is of a rich dark color. The 
ornamentation is very uniform, consisting almost entirely of running hachured 
designs (fig. 14, a). The shapes are small, round-bodied pitchers or jugs, with a few 

*Peabody Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. 

fRuins along the eastern side of the East Mesa at Polacca and vicinity; a small ruin near Payupki, Middle 
Mesa (exploration of the author). 

JCoiton, 1920; and see Fewkes, 1904, pi. XX. 

**See Kidder-Guernsey,1919, pi. 58, g. h. 


THE SAN JUAN 


73 


bowls. The polychrome, practically limited to bowls, has a yellowish base- 
color, the decoration being mostly in black hachnring, and the elements filled 
with red. Bowl-exteriors bear broad, carelessly-drawn horizontal lines in red. It 
thus closely resembles the typical Kayenta polychrome, but lacks almost entirely 
the latter s characteristic white design-edgings. The black-on-white vessels are 
principally ollas and bowls. The ollas are round-bodied and have no handles;* 
the bowls are usually simple in form, with less tendency to outcurving rim and with 
fewer cases of exterior handles. Colanders and flat-topped ollas seem to be absent. 
In decoration, mosquito-barring’ and close-set black designs are rare or lacking; 
the commonest and most characteristic element is shown in figure 14, c; it is 
w^orked into an almost endless number of different patterns. 

Sites containing proto-Kayenta pottery of the sorts just described occur in the 
Kayenta country of Arizona in considerable abundance.f The same w’ares appear. 



b 

Fig. 14. Proto-Kaj’enta potter}' designs 


to some extent at least, in the ruins of Grand Gulch and White Canyon; in the 
Chinlee and Canyon de Chelley; and in sites along the San Juan from Bluff, Utah, 
nearly to the mouth of the AIcElmo;^ I have not seen them in the Hopi country. 
I have, however, ])icked up sherds of proto-Kayenta polychrome w^are (without 
wdiite edgings) at Pueblo Bonito and Hungo Pavie in Chaco Canyon, in Cliff 
Palace on the Mesa Verde, and on Alkali Ridge in the Montezuma Creek drainage. 

From the fact that the so-called proto-Kayenta ruins are obviously allied to the 
Kayenta ruins, but are more abundant, smaller, more widely distributed, and less 
specialized, it is to be inferred that they are older. As in the case of the proto-Mesa 
Verde remains, however, definite proof can only be supplied by further studies; but 
it seems likely from the finds of their typical pottery at Bonito and Cliff Palace that 
the proto-Kayenta villages w^ere inhabited at the same time as the great dw'ellings 
of the Alesa Verde and Chaco Canyon; and that the late Kayenta sites were erected 
after the Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon had been abandoned. Thus Kietsiel and 

*See Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, pi. 53. 

tRuins 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, of the Peabody Museum survey of 1914 (see Kidder-Guernsey, 1919). 

JExplorations of the author. 






74 SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 

Betatakin may well have been the last large communities that existed in the San 
Juan drainage. 

SITES WITH LESS DEVELOPED POTTERY (PRE-PUEBLO) 

Hitherto we have had to deal with dwellings definitely puebloan in structure 
and room-arrangement, and in the possession of one form or another of the kiva. 
The pottery of each group has been made up largely of two types, the corrugated 
and the black-on-white. We must now consider a class of remains from which the 
characteristically puebloan grouping of rectangular rooms built of horizontally 
coursed masonry is absent; which has no kivas, properly so-called; and whose 
pottery-complex does not contain true corrugated ware. 

These remains have been called “slab-house”, “early”, “pre-Pueblo”, etc. 
The latter term is now the generally accepted one, and properly so, for, as will be 
shown presently, it is certain that the pre-Pueblo dwellings are earlier, in the San 
Juan at least, than the mesa villages and cliff-houses which we have so far been 
describing. 

There is considerable variety in the pre-Pueblo ruins that have come to light. 
To summarize, we may say that the houses were constructions with more or less 
fragile walls, round, oval, or rectangular, built in such a way that the lower parts of 
the rooms were sunk well into the ground. Each chamber had a semi-subterranean 
lower third, made by scooping a hole of the requisite size in the earth. If the earth 
was sufficiently solid to stand alone, it was merely smoothed down, coated with 
plaster, and made to serve as the lower wall of the room. If it was loose or crumbly 
it was reinforced with stone slabs set edgeways against it, and often protruding well 
above the level of the ground. The wall was sometimes carried even higher by 
building it up with successive courses of large, hand-molded lumps of adobe. In 
other cases the above-ground or free-standing wall was constructed of upright 
poles, wattled together with withes and coated inside and out with mud. Nothing 
definite is known of roof construction, other than that the coverings of the rooms 
were made of light poles, twigs, bark, and adobe. In some cases at least they were 
conical or pitched. 

Such rooms seldom exceeded ten or twelve feet in diameter. They were 
normally round, or rectangular with rounded corners, and so could not conveniently 
be built in the close juxtaposition typical of pueblo room-arrangement. Accordingly 
they are found in loose aggregations of from two or three to several scores, each 
one-room house being an independent unit in the settlement. The settlements 
sometimes also contain entirely subterranean round chambers, perhaps prototypes 
of the Pueblo kivas; they do not, so far as is known, possess any of the specialized 
features of kivas, such as pilasters, recesses, or deflectors, but were sometimes 
provided with a ventilating shaft. 

Pre-Pueblo house-groups are found in caves, in valley bottoms, and on the tops 
of mesas. The commonest sort of situation appears to be the crest of a slight rise of 
ground, such as a low ridge between two canyon systems or a swell in the contour of 
a valley. Considerations of surface drainage rather than of defense evidently led to 


PLATE 32 



Designs of Kayenta polychrome ware 
(The shading indicates red) 



















PLATE 33 



DEFORMED AXD UNDEFORMED SKULLS 

Tlie left-hand specimen (top and side views) shows the typical posterior flattening of the Pueblo and pre- 
Pueblo periods; it was produced by the use during infancy of a hard cradle-board. The right-hand specimen (top 
and side views) illustrates the natural or undeformed skull typical of the post-Pasket Maker and Basket Maker 
periods. 










' 1 * 




* ^ 







m 


».v 


a 





u’ 

V' 



I 


A 





■ 1 

(lb 


4 > , 









THE SAN JUAN 


75 


the selection of these elevated sites, for the small size and scattered nature of the 
settlements show plainly enough that their inhabitants can not have had much 
cause to fear the attacks of enemies. 

1 he ])re-Piieblo people were agricultiirists, growing corn, beans, squashes, and 
cotton; they also domesticated the turkey. They buried their dead with oflPerings 
of mortuary pottery in graves close to the houses. The heads of the babies, like 
those of most jjrehistoric Pueblo children, were flattened posteriorly by the pressure 
of a hard cradle-board, this flattening of course persisting in the adult skull (pi. 33). 
As to their artifacts in stone, bone, and wood we know very little beyond the fact 
that they used the bow-and-arrow. A single well-made basket has been recovered, 
and a few pieces of cotton and turkey-feather cloth.* No sandals have so far been 
found. Of pottery, however, both mortuary and in the form of sherds from in and 
about the houses, we have a fairly large amount. 

three wares are represented: black, black-on-white, and red. The black ware 
corresponds to the corrugated of the pueblos and cliff-houses in that it served largely 
for cooking vessels; but the pots are to be distinguished from true corrugated pieces 
by the fact that all traces of the structural coils have been obliterated except at the 
necks of the jars, where they are left in the form of a half-dozen or so broad flat 
rings of clay entirely without indentations (pi. 34, g, h). Black-on-white ware 
occurs in the form of bowls, ollas, and small jars. We have as yet few whole pieces, 
but it is certain that large ollas were made. Bowls (pi. 34, d, e, f) are small, thin 
rimmed, and decorated only within; pitchers (pi. 34, b), seed-jars (pi. 34, c), and 
small pots with lugs (pi. 34, a) also commonly occur. 

The decoration is fairly elaborate, but shows a marked crudity of brush work; 
the designs are characterized by dotting of lines and edges, by projections from the 
angles of key-figures, and in ])articular by sets of widely-spaced lines drawn about 
the edges of triangular or stepped elements (pis. 34, 35). A peculiar and still 
unexplained resemblance exists between these line edgings and similar work on 
certain Chaco Canyon vessels (compare ])1. 35, d and pi. *23, a, b). Although red- 
ware is uncommon, a small percentage of sherds seems to turn up at each site. 
Little can be made out as to shapes, but the prevailing forms are evidently bowls 
and gourd-shaped vessels; the decoration is in a slightly lustrous but not vitrified 
blue-black paint. 

While all the above wares are well made, they are inferior to the run of Pueblo 
j)ottery in finish and in variety of decoration. The crudeness of the coiled technique, 
as shown by the cooking vessels, is, however, the best indication of lack of develop¬ 
ment. 

Because of their inconspicuousness pre-Pueblo ruins for many years escaped 
notice and recording. Of late, however, the type has been recognized, and investi¬ 
gators are now on the lookout for it. The result has been that sites are reported 
in increasing numbers. They are known to occur abundantly in the Kayenta 
region, as well as in the Chinlee, Canyon de Chelley, Chaco Canyon, the Pagosa 
country, on the mesas between the Animas and the JMancos, in the McElino, and on 

*Collected by Guernsey, in Sagi Canyon, Arizona. To be puldished in the Peabody Museum Papers. 


76 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


Recapture Creek.* It is probable that further exploration will reveal the presence 
of many hundreds of pre-Pueblo sites in all parts of the San Juan. 

The statement made above, that the pre-Pueblo people antedated the in¬ 
habitants of the pueblos and cliff-houses, rests on definite stratigraphic evidence. 
In 1914 Guernsey and I found in a cave in northeastern Arizona a pre-Pueblo ruin 
overlaid by proto-Kayenta puebloan rubbish.f Guernsey’s subsecjuent explora¬ 
tions have resulted in the discovery of several other similar cases. 

SITES WITH CRI DE POTTERY (POST-BASKET MAKER) 


During the early years of my acquaintance with the Southwest it was always 
puzzling to me that a district which produced so great an amount of fine pottery 
did not seem to contain any traces of the first crude stages of jDottery making. The 
fact that the oldest wares then known, the corrugated and the black-on-white, were 
in many ways the finest of all, made it seem as if the potter’s art must have been 
developed in some other region, and been brought into the Southwest in an 
already perfected form. Then came the recognition of the ])re-Pueblo wares, which 
indicated a certain amount of local growth; but even these were obviously by no 
means the product of a nascent industry. It is only within the last few years that 
material has come to light which appears to show that pottery-making is actually an 
indigenous growth in the Southwest. 

The finds which justify this belief were made by Guernsey in Sagi Canyon.^ 
There in 1920 he found a cave containing Pueblo anti pre-Pueblo remains. At one 
end of the place he also uncovered a series of rounded rooms of aj)parently normal 
pre-Pueblo slab-and-adobe workmanship; but the pottery in them proved, to his 
great surprise, to be a crude gray ware quite different from anything that had 
hitherto been reported. Further excavation showed that the people who built and 
lived in these rooms ])racticed, in addition to potter\'-making, certain arts which 
had until then been considered typical of the Basket Makers, a non-pottery-making 
race of very early times; Guernsey also found that they lacked certain objects which 
are equally lacking from the Basket Maker cidture. A search for burials disclosed 
in a low mound in front of the cave several skeletons resembling Basket Maker 
skeletons in the fact that the skulls were undeformed (see pi. 33). The interments 
were accompanied by mortuary vessels of the same sort as those found in the rooms 
of the cave. 

Following up this lead, Guernsey has since succeeded in collecting a large body 
of data in regard to these people. He has called them post-Basket Alakers. Their 
houses, he finds, are similar to those of the pre-Pueblo, but there the likeness 
ceases. The post-Basket Makers resemble the Basket Alakers in that their skulls 
are always undefornied; in the possession of twined-woven bags and fureloth 
blankets; and in the fact that they had no cotton and no domesticated turkeys. 

*The Pagosa ruins have been reported by .Jeancon (19‘2'2); those of the Animas-Mancos, by Morris (1919); 
those of Chaco Canyon by Judd (1923); the others were located by Guernsey and the writer. 

fKidder-Guernsey, 1919, p. 42; in that publication we called the pre-Pueblo remains “Slab-House”. 

JSee Kidder-Guernsey, 1921. 


PLATE 34 



Pre-Puehio pottery 


Courtesy Peabody Museum 















PLATE 35 



Designs of pre-Pnehlo hlaok-on-white j)<)ttery 



























































THE SAN JUAN 


77 


At least, no cotton cloth and no tiirkcy-fcathcr blankets have so far turned up. 
The typical sandal has a single broad scallop at the toe-end (pi. 36 , b). The 
pottery is mostly dark gray, but a primitive form of black-on-white ware appears, 
as well as a few undecorated red pieces. Although Guernsey’s material has not yet 
been published, I have his permission to state that the run of the pottery is inferior 
to that of the pre-Pueblo and that certain post-Basket IMaker sites contain wares of 
exceeding crudeness. 

The present known range of this interesting type of remains is restricted to the 
Kayenta district, the Hopi country, and the Chinlee valley of northeastern Arizona; 
I believe, however, that certain graves opened by JMorris on the La Plata will 
ultimately prove to belong to a late phase of the same culture.* It is also possible 
that the ‘earth lodges” of the Mesa Verde are of post-Basket Maker origin; the 
published description of them is, however, not full enough to justify any definite 
conclusions.! Another reason for strongly suspecting the former presence of the 
post-Basket Makers on the IMesa \ erde is furnished by the crude pottery and the 
scallop-toed sandal discovered by Nordenskiold in Step House.! 

It is of course to be inferred that the jmst-Basket Makers were intermediate in 
time between the Basket Makers and the ])re-Pueblos. This was practically proved 
during the past two summers, when Guernsey in the Chinlee and the writer in 
Sagi canyon found typical post-Basket Maker pottery underlying pre-Pueblo 
deposits. To date no superposition of post-Basket ]\Iaker on Basket Alaker re¬ 
mains has come to light; but there can be little doubt that (iuernsey’s relative 
dating is correct. 

SITES WITHOUT POTTERY (BASKET MAKER) 

Although Basket Maker specimens have been known for many years, they 
have only recently been brought to prominence, and their position at the bottom of 
the Southwestern cultural sequence firmly established. They were discovered by 
Richard Wetherill in Grand Gulch, ITali, during the late eighties or early nineties. 
He recognized the ]:)eculiarities of his finds, named them Basket Alaker, and also 
determined, l)y the first use of stratigra])hic evidence ever made in the Southwest, 
that they belonged to an older period than the cliff-houses. ^Montgomery soon 
after published notes on certain Basket iMaker graves and specimens, but did not 
believe that they represented a distinct culture.** Prudden was the first to give an 
adequate account of the finds,ft but it was a matter of ten years after the original 
discovery before a description of the si)ecimens themselves was published.!! Stu¬ 
dents of the Southwest even then paid little or no attention to the chronological 
jmsition of the Basket Makers, believing that the Grand Gulch remains represented 

*]Morri,i, 19U), p. 194; Kidder-Guernsey, 19-20. 

jFewkes, 1920, p. 58. 

JNordenskiold, 1893, pl.s. XXIII, 1; XXIV, 2, 10; XLVI, 0. Since the al>ove was Mritten the author ha.s 
visited the Mesa Verde and found that Step Hou.se cave contained a large post-Basket Maker settlement. Many 
other sites of this culture were observed on the Mesa. 

♦♦Montgomery. 1894. 

ttPrudden. 1897. 

Pepper. 1902. 


78 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


merely a specialized local phase of the general piieblo-cliff-house civilization. In 
1914, however, Guernsey and the writer hit upon Basket Alaker graves in north¬ 
eastern Arizona, and since that time Guernsey has fully established their antiquity 
and has gathered a great quantity of data in regard to their culture. 

The houses of the Basket iMakers have never been identified, which makes it 
seem probable that they lived in more or less temporary structures, built of perish¬ 
able materials, and located in the open. Although they did not live in caves, except 
perhaps during periods of unusually severe weather, they habitually availed them¬ 
selves of the sandy floors of large dry caverns for the storage of their crops and for 
the burial of their dead. The storage places were slab-walled cists (pi. 37); or, 
where the earth was firmer, jar-shaped excavations. These were often put to a 
secondary use as graves. Because of the dryness of the sites picked out for cist¬ 
building the contents of the graves are usually excellently preserved, and where 
subsequent disturbance has not taken place, everything is found in almost perfect 
condition, the bodies of the dead desiccated to “mummies”, the baskets, textiles, 
and wooden implements as sound and as perfect as if they had been buried yester¬ 
day (pi. 38). 

The normal Basket INIaker grave contains two or three individuals, each 
tightly flexed, wrapped in blankets, and accompanied by numerous mortuary 
offerings of foods, tools, weapons, ornaments, and particularly baskets. From a 
study of the graves we can get an unusually detailed picture of the life and arts of 
the people. The Basket iVIakers were long-headed and of medium stature; they did 
not practice sknll deformation (see pi. 33). They were, to a certain extent at least, 
agricultural, for their caches and graves often contain large amounts of corn. This 
corn is of special interest because it is of a single and apparently fairly primitive 
variety, rather than of several distinct varieties as in the case of pueblo and 
cliff-house corn. Squashes were grown, but no beans or cotton have yet been found 
among Basket Alaker remains. The turkey was evidently not domesticated. 

Although they had no cotton and apparently did not use the loom, the Basket 
Alakers were very expert in the making of large and elaborately ornamented 
twined-woven bags (pi. 38, d, g). Their sandals, too, are twined-woven and are 
easily distinguishable from later sandals by their square, fringed toes (pi. 36, c). 
Coiled basketry was made in large quantities in the form of trays (pi. 38, c), bowls, 
jars (p. 28, b), and large panniers (pi. 38, f); twilled work in the form of mats and 
baskets, such as occur commonly in the prehistoric pueblos, is very rare. Fur- 
cloth (pi. 38, a) instead of turkey-feather cloth was used for blankets. 

No trace of the use of the bow-and-arrow has ever been found. The projectiles 
of the Basket Alakers were light darts four or five feet long hurled by means of the 
s])ear-thrower or atl-atl, a device intended to add greater length and therefore 
greater propulsive force to the arm. The most striking difference between the 
Basket Alaker culture and that of the other j^eople whom we have so far been 
considering, is seen in the total absence of true pottery. A few unbaked clay dishes 
of the crudest sort have been found, but no vessel or even sherd of fired pottery 
assignable to the Basket Alakers has ever turned up in the many cists and graves 
examined. 



SANDALS, ( IIKONOLCKiirAL SKUIKS 











































THE SAN J U A N 


79 


One might catalogue a dozen more traits in which the Basket Alakers differ 
from the Pueblos, but enough has been said to show the wide cleavage that exists 
between the two cultures. It was at one time difficult to see any direct connection 
whatever between them, but the discovery of the post-Basket Alaker and pre- 
Pueblo remains have served in large measure to bridge the gap. 

The position of the Basket Makers as the oldest people of whom we have knowl¬ 
edge in the Southwest so far, is clearly indicated. Stratigraphic finds have proved 
that they antedated the Pueblos; and while no Basket Alaker remains have yet 
been found underlying those of the post-Basket Alakers or of the pre-Pueblos, the 
inferential evidence for greater antiquity is so strong as practically to amount to 
proof. 

The known range of the Basket Alakers has been considerably enlarged since 
the first discoveries in Grand Gulch, Utah. It now includes all the northern tribu¬ 
taries of the San Juan from Comb Wash to the Colorado; it covers the Chinlee 
valley, and the entire drainage of its largest affluent. Laguna Creek; recently it has 
been extended to the Kanab district north of the Colorado river (fig. ^22, p. 120).* 
Outside these limits no surely Basket jMaker remains have yet come to light, but 
certain specimens taken by Hough from caves in the Tulerosa country of southern 
New Mexico have a Basket Alaker look.f 

Thus the known range of the Basket Alaker culture is a fairly restricted one; 
but I feel sure that it, or cultures closely allied to it, will ultimately be found to have 
covered a vastly more extensive territory, embracing, perhaps, all the arid lands 
drained by the Colorado river and running south along the central plateau well into 
Mexico. 


NORTHERN PERIPHERAL DISTRICT 

Although they are not in the San Juan drainage, it is convenient to mention 
here the ruins that occur in the country to the north and northwest of the San Juan. 
To the northeast the high Rockies contain no traces of Pueblo occupation; but in 
the lower arid and semi-arid regions of Utah, from the Colorado line westward to 
the Great American Desert and northward to Salt Lake, are the remains of numer¬ 
ous settlements. The archaeological data for most of this vast territory are 
unsatisfactorily vague, and were it not for the recent work of Judd in western Utah 
we should have little idea as to the nature of the sites. 

The accompanying map (fig. 15) shows the general location of such remains as 
have been reported. In the drainages of the Green and Grand rivers are a few 
sites briefly described by Newberry, Montgomery, and Fewkes.J All these are 
small groups of rooms and towers, built of rough masonry on pinnacles, juts of 
mesas, and other places easy of defense and commanding wide outlooks. The ruins 
visited by Fewkes contained no pottery, but both Newberry and Alontgomery 
state that painted wares are to be found at the sites they examined. They give no 

*Nusshauni. 19i'2. 

tHough, 1914, p. '21, and pi- 20, fig. 2, a spear thrower. 

JNewberry, 1876; Montgomery, 1894; Fewkes, 1917, a. 


80 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 



Fig. 1.5. Di.stribiition of the .several types of remains in the Northern Peripheral 
district. 


information, however, which allows us to judge of the type of vessels encountered. 

The ruins of central and southwestern Utah are better known. As the map 
shows, they extend in an almost continuous line from the northern shore of Great 
Salt Lake to the extreme southwestern corner of the state. Throughout this whole 
region there are, or rather there were before repeated plowings resulted in their 
destruction, great numbers of low adobe mounds. Excavations have been made by 
many investigators, mostly treasure seekers, but the only adequate published 
accounts are those of Montgomery and Judd. 

The mounds consist of adobe from the disintegrated walls of houses, and of 
rubbish deposits that grew up about the dwellings while they were still in use. The 
sites would seem to have been occupied for relatively long periods, as each one 
shows evidence of the erection and decay of many successive structures. No 
differences, either in architecture or in artifacts, is, according to Judd, to be observed 
between the oldest levels and those above. The villages were more or less loosely 
grouped assemblages of rectangular one-story rooms, built singly or placed end-to- 
end in sets of three or four, and all arranged about an open central space or plaza.* 

*.See .Judd, 1919, pt 1. 
















After Niissbaiim Courtesy Museum of the American Indian 

A IIASKKT MAKKK STOKAt.K AM) litJUIAL CAVIO 

Tlic Basket Makers dug- sliallow holes in the sandy floors of eaves, lined them with stone slabs, and roofed tliem with poles and 
l)ark. Such cists were used j)riniarily for the storage of croi)s, but burials were often made in them. The round, slal)-walled rooms of 
the i)ost-Basket Maker and pre-Pueblo periods doubtless developed from the Basket Maker cist. 


















THE SAX JUAN 


81 


The walls of the rooms were of adobe laid up in lumps or “gobs” and worked to an 
even surface with the hands. Entrance must normally have been through the 
pole-and-adobe roofs, as lateral doorways are exceedingly rare. 

In the courtyards of the villages are found remains of round chambers so sunk 
into older rubbish de])osits as to be wholly subterranean. Each one has a central 
firepit, and although no ventilating device has been recorded, there can be little 
doubt that Judd is correct in considering them closely allied to the kivas of more 
southerly ruins. 

Of the mortuary customs practically nothing is known, but ^Montgomery notes 
the finding of a few burials in a mound at Paragonah. They lay deep in the deposit, 
well below house-floors; but from the fact that there was always so much rebuilding 
at these sites it is not certain that the original interments were made under floors. 
One skull was strongly flattened posteriorly, the others all undeformed. 

Among the minor antiquities recovered from the Utah mounds are fragments 
of coiled basketry, great numbers of bone implements, as well as manos and metates 
for grinding corn. Charred corn, also, has been found in considerable quantities. 
The grooved stone axe is not represented in any collection. The pottery is of 
particular interest. There is much crude undecorated gray ware, but with it there 
always occur a number of pieces of very well-made corrugated vessels, and a certain 
percentage of black-on-white sherds. The latter are usually from bowls, decorated 
only on the inside, and bearing geometric ornamentation. Judd’s pottery has not 
yet been illustrated, but a number of decorated pieces from St. George, Utah, are 
figured by Holmes.* They bear a rather generalized type of ornament, not 
definitely to be associated with any of the specialized design systems of the 
San Juan. One peculiarity is mentioned by Judd, the interlineal use of red paint, 
superficially applied after the bowls had been fired.f 

Such are the common mound ruins of central and southwestern Utah. There 
is also a different kind of site. X"ear Willard, on the northeastern shore of Great 
Salt Lake, Judd opened a mound which covered the remains “of a structure which 
must have resembled, more or less closely, the well-known winter hogan of the 
Xiavaho Indians. The central and most prominent feature was a fireplace, two feet 
seven inches in diameter and three and one-half inches deep. Surrounding this, 
and nearly four feet from each other, were four post-holes, marking the former 
position of as many upright supports. Since the floor of this dwelling could not be 
traced beyond a diameter of fifteen feet, and as the ease with which it could be 
traced decreased with the distance from the firepit, it may be assumed that the hut 
had been circular in form, and that its roof and walls were of heavy timbers which 
rested upon the ground and leaned against crosspieces supported by the four posts 
surrounding the fireplace. Fragments of charred wood, and large quantities of 
baked clay bearing impressions of logs, willows, and grass, furnished material 
evidence respecting the nature of the roof construction.’’J The potsherds in this 
mound were of coarse plain ware, and corrugated ware. Black-on-white had been 
reported from the vicinity but Judd was unable to find any specimens. 


*Holmes, 1886, figs. ‘2.58-^71. 
tJudd, 1919, p. 19. 

JJudd, 1917, b, p. 119. 


82 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


At Beaver City, about forty-five miles southeast of Sevier Lake, Judd found 
further examples of the hogau-like houses, and in these were the same sorts of 
pottery, besides many fragments of black-on-white. The Beaver City round houses 
lay above the disintegrated walls of a typical rectangular-roonied adobe village. 
Special emphasis should be laid on this find, for although we cannot yet decide 
what its exact significance may be, it illustrates very clearly how vitally important 
it is to excavate carefully and to be constantly on the lookout for any case of super- 
])osition. Had Judd been less keenly observant, he might easily have missed this 
]:)articular bit of evidence, and might well have considered the primitive-looking 
Willard houses as belonging to a stage of development earlier than that represented 
by the adobe ruins, and so have gained an entirely wrong impression of the archaeo¬ 
logical problems of the area. 

We have not as yet enough data to allow us to draw final conclusions as to the 
place of the Utah ruins in the general scheme of Southwestern archaeology. They 
are, however, surely Puebloan, as is proved by the evident permanence of the settle¬ 
ments, the pottery, the corn and the use of the metate. Their age, relative to that 
of more southern ruins, is hard to estimate. The simple nature of the houses, and 
the primitive a]>pearance of the kiva-like structures, might seem to indicate that 
they were actually pre-Puebloan; but the black-on-white and corrugated pottery is 
certainly of early Pueblo types. This would appear to show that they were built 
during the first part of the Pueblo period, when the vigorous early culture of the 
San Juan was spreading out and exerting its influence far and wide, but before the 
highly specialized sub-cultures of that region (the Chaco Canyon, Alesa Verde, and 
Kayenta) had yet come into being. How long the inhabitants of these Utah 
settlements managed to hold their country we have as yet no means of knowing, 
but eventually they disappeared entirely. Their end, it is to be supposed, came 
suddenly, because nowhere in this district do we find that they gathered together 
into large communities, as Pueblos normally did when in difficulties. That the end 
came early is indicated by the fact that pottery of early types was made to the 
very last, and that no sherd of late southern wares. Little Colorado, Gila, or 
Tulerosa, has turned up in any of the mounds excavated. 

No pre-Pueblo remains have yet been found in LTah outside the San Juan 
drainage, although one small neck-coiled jar from St. George has a suspiciously pre- 
Pueblo look.* A very interesting Basket iMaker cave, however, was recently 
discovered in the southern ])art of the state by Nussbaum.t This greatly enlarges 
the previously known range of the Basket Alaker culture, but whether it penetrated 
still farther to the north and northwest is not known. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE SAN JUAN 


General 
Prudden, 1903*. 

Hewett, 1908, chap. VI. 

♦Holmes, 1886, fig. ‘24'2. 
t-Vussbaum, 19-2!2. 


Cummings, 1910. 
Kidder, 1917. 
Morris, 1921*. 


platp: 38 



Courtesy Peabody Museum 


BASKET MAKEK SPECIMENS 

a. Blanket of fur-cloth. 1), c, f, Baskets. <1, g. Bags of fibre-string with colored <lesigns. e, ('radle originally 
covered with mountain-sheep hide. 
















THE SAN JUAN 


83 


PUEBLO REMAINS BY DISTRICTS 
Pagosa District 
Jeancon, 192‘2.* 

Roberts, 

La Plata—Animas District 

Newberry, 1876, pp. 79-80. 

Holmes, 1878, jip. 387-388. 

Birnie, 1875. 

Morgan, 1880; 1881, pp. 172-188. 
Moorehead and Gunckel, 1892 
Moorehead, 1902, chaps. 13-16; 1908. 
Morris, 1915*; 1917, a; 1917, b; 1918;. 

1919, pt. II; 1919, a*; 1921, a.* 

Nelson, 1917, a. 

^Iesa Verde—Mancos Canyon District 

Jackson, 1876, pp. 369-377. 

Holmes, 1878, pp. 388-398*. 

Chapin, 1890; 1892. 

Nordenskiold, 1893*. 

Fewkes, 1908; 1909*; 1910; 1910, a; 
1911, a*; 1916*; 1916, a; 1916, b; 

1916, d; 1916, e; 1917; 1917, a; 1917, b*; 
1920; 1922; 1923. 

Morris, 1919, jit. I*. 

Montezuma ^’ALLEY—McElmo District 

Jackson, 1876, pp. 377-381; 1878, ji]). 
411-415. 

Holmes, 1878, pp. 398-400. 

Morgan, 1881, pp. 188-193. 

AVetherill, 1894. 

(iimckel, 1897. 

Ootensburg, 1900. 

Prndden, 1903, pp. 257-267*; 1914*. 
Morley, 1908. 

Morley and Kidder, 1917. 

Fewkes, 1918*; 1919*; 1923, b. 

Montezuma Creek — Grand Gulch Dis¬ 
trict 

Jackson, 1878, p]). 425-430. 

Moorehead and Gunckel, 1892. 
Montgomery, 1894, pj). 227-234. 

“H”, 1894.^ 

Prudden, 1903, pp. 267-276*; 1918*. 
Kidder, 1910. 

Kayenta District 

Prudden, 1903, pp. 282-285. 

Cummings, 1910*; 1915. 

Fewkes, 1911*. 

Judd, 1918. 

Kidder and Guernsey, 1919*; 1921. 


Canyon de Chelley—Chinlee District 
Simpson, 1850, jip. 102-105. 

Jackson, 1878, pp. 415-425. 

Putnam, 1879, pp. 372-373. 

Stevenson,1886. 

Bickford, 1890. 

Mindeleff, C., 1895; 1897*. 

Fewkes, 1906. 

Prudden, 1903, pp. 279-282. 

Kidder and Guernsey, 1919, pp. 71-74. 

Chaco Canyon District 
Simpson, 1850, pp. 75-86. 

Jackson, 1878, chap. H*. 

Morrison in Putnam, 1879, pp. 366-369. 
Loew, 1875. 

Hoffman, 1878. 

Morgan, 1881, chap. VH. 

Bickford, 1890. 

Pepper, 1899; 1905; 1906; 1909; 1920*. 
Hewett, 1905, a; 1921; a, 1922. 
Huntington, 1914, jip. 75-82*. 

Chapman, 1921. 

Bradfield, 1921. 

Judd, 1922*; 1922, a; 1923. 

Wetherill and Cummings, 1922. 

Wissler, 1922. 

Northern Peripheral District 
Ne^vberrv, 1876. 

Palmer, 1876; 1880. 

Holmes, 1886, pp. 287-288. 

Montgomery, 1894*. 

Duffield, 1904. 

Judd,1917;1917, a;1917, b*;1918;1919*; 
1920. 

Pre-Pueblo Remains 
Morris, 1917, b, p. 462; 1919, pp. 182- 
194*. 

Kidder and Guernsey, 1919, pp. 41-45, 
152-154*. 

Jeancon, 1922, pp. 5-11*. 

Post-Basket Maker Remains 
Nordenskiold, 1893, pp. 37-43. 

Morris, 1919, pp. 194-195. 

Kidder and Guernsey, 1920; 1921. 

Basket Maker Remains 
Montgomery, 1894, pp. 227-234. 

“H”, 1894. 

Prudden, 1897. 

Pepper, 1902*; 1905, a. 

Kidder and Guernsey, 1919; pp. 74-90, 
154-192; 1921. 

Guernsey and Kidder, 1921*. 

Nussbaum, 1922*. 


THE RIO GRANDE 


The sources of the Rio Grande are in the same high mountains of southern 
Colorado which give birth to the San Juan. Thence the river turns eastward, 
enters New Mexico, and flows practically due south through the entire length of 
that state (fig. 16). Its western tributaries head against the continental divide, on 
the other side of which lie the upper tributaries of the Little Colorado and the Gila. 
The Rio Grande drainage in New Mexico comprises every sort of land, from lofty 
mountain ranges to bleak, sandy desert; a large part of it, however, is typical 
Southwestern country, arid, yet not hopelessly dry; its mesas covered with cedars 
and pinyons, its lower stretches overgrown with sagebrush, cactus, and other semi- 
desert vegetation. Such parts of this great area as are between 3,000 and 7,000 feet 
in elevation, and as are not absolute desert, usually contain the relics of former 
sedentary inhabitants in the form of house-ruins great and small. Below the Texas 
line there seem to be no ruins. 

x\rchaeologically, the Rio Grande is like all other parts of the Southwest in that 
certain sections of it have been carefully explored and their antiquities more or less 
fully studied; while other areas, much larger in extent and equally prolific in ruins, 
still await adequate investigation. It differs, however, from all other parts of the 
Southwest, with the exception of the Little Colorado drainage, in that it is still 
occupied by living tribes^ of Pueblo Indians, who to this day carry on most of the 
arts and customs of their prehistoric ancestors. Thus we have an invaluable 
starting point for our researches, and can work back from the known to the unknown 
without meeting any very serious obstacles. 

The most carefully studied part of the Rio Grande country is what may be 
called the Santa Fe region, viz., the Rio Grande valley from San Juan to Santo 
Domingo, with the Pajarito plateau on the west and the Galisteo basin and the 
upper Pecos valley on the east. In this area prior to 1912 much exploration had 
been done by Bandelier, Hewett, and others, a great number of ruins had been 
mapped, and several had been excavated.* Little progress, however, had been 
made toward the relative dating of the numerous prehistoric remains; and few 
convincing results of a correlative nature were attained until N. C. Nelson began 
his studies in the Galisteo basin. Here, as has been said in a previous section, he 
dug in the hitherto neglected early historic ruins and made himself familiar with the 
styles of pottery in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then, by 
working in the rubbish heaps of sites whose occupancy had lasted back into pre¬ 
historic times, he was able by stratigraphic methods to recognize the pottery types 
of the late i^rehistoric period. By an extension of the same stratigraphic methods, 
and by using pottery as a criterion, he succeeded in determining the outline of 
culture-growth in his area from a very early period down to the time of the Pueblo 
revolt of 1680. The writer’s excavations at Pecos have served to amplify these 

*See bibliography of tiie Rio Grande at the end of this section. 


THE RIO GRANDE 


85 



Fig. 16. The Rio Grande area (outlined); the Santa b'e region (shaded); and 
Pecos (star). 


data and to extend our knowledge well past the beginning of the last century; from 
which point studies at the still-inhabited pueblos carry it to the present day. 

To summarize the knowledge gained from these investigations, we may say 
that the earliest remains of which we so far have knowledge are certain small 
settlements, apparently of pre-Pueblo type, observed by Nelson but as yet un¬ 
described.* Such settlements seem to be rare in the Pajarito plateau and in the 
Galisteo basin and have so far entirely eluded search in the Pecos valley. The next 
stage that we can recognize is marked by small houses scattered in considerable 
abundance over the whole region; they consist of from three or four to twenty or 
thirty rooms, were probably not over one story high, and may or may not have 
contained kivas. Their small size and the nature of the sites upon which they were 
built show plainly enough that their inhabitants were in little fear of attack by 
enemies. The pottery of these ruins is black-on-white and corrugated, with a very 
small percentage of black-on-red. The black-on-white is of a generalized style not 
closely identifiable with any of the specialized types of the San Juan or other 

*Nelson, 1916, p. 171, footnote, and table, p. 179. 

















86 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O G Y 


regions. The corrugated ware is distinctly poor, the coiling uneven and the inden¬ 
tation work slipshod. 

Following these small ruins in time, are much larger structures, definitely 
puebloan in form, the rooms being built about court-yards and terraced to a height 
of at least two stories.* They contain round subterranean kivas with a central 
firepit, and a ventilator opening to the east, but have no recesses or pilasters.f 
The pottery (pi. 39, a; 40, a) is similar to that of the small ruins, but a number of 
the black-on-white bowls have flaring rims. A few red bowl-sherds appear bear¬ 
ing interior decoration in dull black and exterior designs in white. 

The next stej) in ceramic evolution was the introduction of glaze-paints (pl.39,b; 
j)l. 40, b). These first occur on red, shortly afterward on light-colored vessels; 
black-on-white ware dies out and is re])laced by a thick gray pottery called biscuit- 
ware. The ruins at which this first glaze (Glaze 1 of the Pecos series) occurs are 
large; indeed, from (ilaze 1 times onward, the settlements become greater in size, 
more compact in ground-plan, and fewer in number. 

The continued development in pottery-making brought in the use of dull red 
])aints to add to the beauty of the glazed designs (Nelson’s “three-color glazed and 
painted wares”; Glazes 2, 3, 4, o, of the Pecos series; see pi. 39, c-f; pi. 40, c-f); 
biscuit-ware gradually declined, and corrugated gave place to plain black for cooking 
pottery. The ruins of this general period are well exbnplified by the large pueblos 
of the Pajarito such as Puye and Tyuonyi, great quadrangular or circular villages 
surrounding courts (]d. 41, a). Their kivas are round subterranean rooms with 
])lain unrecessed walls, central firepits, and ventilators opening to the east. 

Toward the close of the glazed-ware period, and after many of its most flourish¬ 
ing sites had already been abandoned, came the discovery of the Southwest by the 
S])aniards. Glazing held on for a hundred years or so, becoming more and more 
degenerate (Nelson’s “historic two-color glazes”; Pecos Glaze 6; pi. 39, g; pi. 40, g); 
until at or about the time of the revolt of 1680 it was finally abandoned and the 
Rio Grande jiotters began to ])roduce light-colored wares ornamented with dull 
black and red paints (Nelson’s “modern painted”; Pecos “Modern” pi. 39, h; pi. 
40, h), closely resembling the ])resent-day pottery of San Ildefonso, Cochiti, and 
Santo Domingo. 

The above sketch of the archaeology of the Santa Fe region has been made very 
brief because papers on the general problems of this area, as well as detailed studies 
of the different periods, will ap])ear in the later reports of the present series. 

We have, as has just been shown, a fairly good knowledge of the Santa Fe 
district, but there are many other parts of the Rio Grande drainage as to which we 
have so far very little information. Of these the Jeniez area, the country about 
Acoma, the region of the Salines, and the lower valley of the river itself are the most 
notable examples. What little we do know, however, indicates that throughout the 

*Examples in tlie Pecos valley are at Rowe and on the Pecos mesa (North Terrace and underlying main 
plaza); for an account of the Rowe ruin see (lUthe, 1917. The same type evidently occurs in the Galisteo basin; as 
Nelson says: “the large cpiadrangular village was fully developed before the black-on-white pottery went out of 
style” (1916, p. 171). 

fTliis description is of the only kiva of the period so far excavated. It lies in the plaza of the north quad¬ 
rangle at Pecos (see p. "27). 


PLATE 39 



PEfOS POTTERY 

Chronological series arranged to illustrate the sequence of types from the Black-on-white ware of early pre¬ 
historic times (a), to Modern Avare made during the first part of the nineteenth century (h). 





t 


I . 








X 


% 


i 







PLATE 40 





Chronological series of bowl designs: a, 
Glaze 6; h, ^Fodern. 


PECOS POTTERY 

IFlack-on-white; b, Glaze 1; c. Glaze d. Glaze 3; e. Glaze 4; f, Glaze 5; 












































THE RIO GRANDE 


87 


whole central Rio (irande drainage in New Mexico the course of development was 
analogous to that in the Santa Fe district; i.e., there was an early period in which the 
])eople lived in small communities and made black-on-white and corrugated pottery, 
a later time when they gathered together into larger villages, and a still later time 
when they became concentrated in a few great ])ueblos, discontinued the more 
archaic types of pottery, and turned to the use of colored wares decorated with 
glaze paint. Mith the increase in concentration ensued a tendency to draw in 
toward the centre of the area and toward the valley of the river, and when the 
Spaniards arrived, the country held by the Pueblos was far less extensive than it 
had been in the Black-on-white and earlier Glaze periods. 

'When we come to consider the archaeology of the Rio Grande as a whole, we 
are struck by the paucity of pre-Pueblo remains and by the entire absence, so far as 
we know, of any sign of the post-Basket IMaker and Basket Maker. As to the pre- 
Pueblo, I feel certain that further reconnoissance will result in the finding of many 
more sites, but I should expect them to occur in the northern and western parts of 
the Rio Grande rather than in the eastern and southern. If evidence of the post- 
Basket Maker and Basket Maker cultures ever turns up, it will be found, I think, in 
the same districts. In other words, it is my opinion that the eastern and southern 
])arts of the Rio Grande drainage in New ^Mexico were not occupied by agricultural 
people prior to the early Pueblo period. This feeling is based on the general lateness 
of development in the Rio Grande as compared to that in the San Juan. 

There are not many data to correlate chronologically the Rio Grande with the 
San Juan, for the latter country had been deserted for an unknown length of time 
before the arrival of the Spanish in 1540. ^Ye do have, however, a few scraps of 
evidence. At Bandelier Bend, a late archaic black-on-white site in the Pecos 
^"alley, there have turned up several undoubted Alesa Verde bowl-sherds; thus, the 
late archaic Black-on-white period in the Pecos Valley appears to have corresponded 
in time to the epoch of greatest development in the San Juan. Furthermore, the 
entire life of the glaze-paint stages seems surely to have been later than the abandon¬ 
ment of the San Juan, for no scrap of glazed ware or of the contemporary biscuit- 
ware has ever been found in any San Juan ruin. It would seem, therefore, that 
all the more sizeable villages of the Rio Grande were built subsequent to the aban¬ 
donment of the San Juan; and that at the time of the great towns of the Chaco and 
the Mesa Verde, which represented the culmination of San Juan civilization, the 
Rio Grande people, although they were already definitely puebloan in culture, were 
only just beginning to gather together into large communities. 

The chronological correlation between the Rio Grande ruins and those of the 
Little Colorado will be taken up after the discussion of that area. 

Eastern Peripheral District 

The country lying ea.st of the Rio Grande drainage in New Mexico has not been 
explored by archaeologists. It is not known, therefore, just how far in that direction 
ruins of pueblo type extend. I have been told by ranchers that there are sites 


88 


S O L T H W E S T E R X A R C H A E O L O G Y 


almost to the Texas border. From the descriptions and from the few potsherds T 
liave seen, the villages wonld all appear to have been small and to have belonged to 
the early part of the Black-on-white period. The limits indicated on the map 
(fig. 3, p. 37) show the extent, so far as we can determine it at present, of such 
sites in eastern and southeastern Xew ^Mexico. The ruin in Scott County, Kansas, 
de.scribed by Williston and ^Martin* was undoubtedly built during the historic 


])eriod by Pueblos seeking to escai)e from 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 

Chama-Taos District 
(Ype, 1875. 

Holmes, 1878, p. 401. 

Yarrow in Putnam, 1879, pp. 36‘2-365, 
Bandelier. 189'-2, chap. I. 

Hewett, 1906, pp. 33-44*. 

Jeancon, 1911; 19L2; 1919; 1921; 1923*. 
Harrington, 1916, pp. 107-205. 

P.\JARITO Pl^\TEAU DISTRICT 

Stevenson, 1883, a, pp. 430-432. 

Bandelier 1892, chaps. I and lY*. 

Starr, 1900. 

Hewett, 1904, a; 1906. pp. 16-32*; 1908, 
chap. IX; 1909*; 1909, a*; 1909, h; 1920. 
Bierbower, 1905. 

Beam, 1909. 

Horley, 1910. 

Hewett, Henderson and, Robbins, 1913*. 
Huntington, 1914, pp. 82-85. 

Kidder, 1915. 

Harrington, 1916, pp. 205-390. 

Wilson, 1916; 1916, a; 1918. 

Jemez District 

Ivoew, 1875, pp. 176-177. 


Spanish rule. 


THE RIO GRANDE 

Bandelier, 1892, chap. Y. 

Holmes, 1905. 

Hewett, 1906, pp. 44-51. 

Reagan, 1917; 1922. 

Bloom, 1922; 1923. 

Pecos District 

Bandelier, 1881*; 1892, chap. III. 

Hewett, 1904*. 

Kidder, 1916, a; 1916, b; 1917, a; 1917, b. 
Kidder, M. A. and A. Y., 1917*. 

Guthe, 1917. 

Galisteo District 

Bandelier, 1892, chap. II. 

Nelson, 1913; 1914*; 1916*; 1917. 

Rio Puerco District 
Lummis, 1889. 

Bandelier, 1892, pp. 305-326. 

Hodge, 1897; 1897, a; 1914. 

Lower Rio Graxde—Maxzaxo District 

Bandelier, 1892, chap. YI. 

Huntington, 1914, pp. 72-74. 

Walter, 1916. 


*WilIiston, 1899; Martin, 1909. 


PLATE 41 





a 



I) 


a. 


Large circular pueblo. 


RIO 

Tyuonyi. 


GRAXDE HABITATION'S 

1), Artificial caves used as dwellings near Tyuonyi. 

















J'HE LITTLE COLORADO 


This river rises in the highlands of western New Mexico and flows a little 
north of west to empty into the Colorado (fig. 17). Its course roughly parallels that 
of the San Juan, but unlike the San Juan its sources are not in high, snow-covered 
mountains, so that the actual amount of water it carries is not great. It often runs 
dry in midsummer, and much of the country along its lower reaches is practically 
uninhabitable desert. The upper tributaries, however, particularly those of the 
east and southeast, traverse some of the most beautifid hill and mesa land of the 
Southwest, well-watered and often heavily forested. 

The ruins of the Little Colorado drainage are for the most part reduced to low, 
inconspicuous mounds. This is evidently due to poor construction, and perhaps in 
some degree to climatic conditions, rather than to great antiquity. The result of it, 
however, is that a classification based on architectural features is impossible with¬ 
out house-excavation, very little of which has ever been done, almost all investiga¬ 
tors having contented themselves with digging in the easily found and extremely 
])?olific burial grounds. Hence we know almost nothing of the details of room 
arrangement, masonry, or kiva construction; in most cases, indeed, we are even 
ignorant as to whether or not kivas are present. Accordingly, in attempting a 
classification, one is forced to rely upon the evidence of pottery to an even greater 
degree than elsewhere. Here again difficulties are encountered, for the pottery 
situation in the Little Colorado is evidenth" a very complex one and no compre¬ 
hensive classification of the wares has yet been made. The trouble is that most 
work in the Little Colorado, particularly in the very important central regions along 
the river itself, has been carried on by explorers who have placed more reliance 
upon the clan-migration legends of the Hopi and Zuhi, than upon the empirical 
evidence offered by the ruins and their contents. Hence the strictly archaeological 
aspects of the problem have been to a large extent disregarded. 

To make a start, therefore, we are forced to turn to the Zuni district at the 
extreme eastern end of the drainage, where recent studies by Kroeber, Nelson, and 
S])ier of the Archer M. Huntington Survey of the American iMuseum of Natural 
History, have achieved clear-cut and satisfactory results. 

This region contains a single inhabited town, the pueblo of Zuiii, and the ruins 
of a great number of other villages, large and small. Certain of the sites had been 
identified by previous students as the “Seven Cities of Cibola”, which were 
visited and described by the Spanish explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries; most of them, however, are obviously prehistoric. Spier, who carried on 
most of the investigation, paid ])articular attention to the pottery, and was able, 
by a combination of stratigraphic, comparative, and statistical methods, to work 
back from the wares of the historic ruins, and eventually to arrange many sites in a 
chronological sequence which is without much doubt correct.* By relying upon 

*For the details of this important contribution to archaeological method see Spier, 1917, and review by the 
writer (Kidder, 1919). 


90 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 



empirical evidence rather than upon native legendary testimony Spier proved that 
one ruin, Hallonawa, hitherto considered historic, is in reality prehistoric; and that 
Zuni, long thought to have been founded since the conquest, was actually settled 
prior to 1540. 

The ])rocess of development, as determined by Spier, may be summarized as 
follows. The earliest sites were little buildings with pottery identical with that of 
the pre-Pneblo ruins in the San Juan. Then came somewhat larger houses whose 
pottery is preponderantly corrugated and black-on-white fpl. 4*2, c); then 
began a decline in black-on-white ware, accompanied by a rise of redware with 
decoration first in black paint (pi.42,a),later in both black and white paint (pl.42,b). 
During the earlier phases of this ]:)eriod the structures were still small, and 
lacked the compact grouping and terraced arrangement of the later pueblo. After 
the introduction of three-color (i.e. black-and-white-on-red) painted decoration, there 
came into use the true pueblo form of architecture. Painted decoration soon gave 
way to decoration in black glaze, the three-color scheme still obtaining (i.e. black- 
glaze-and-white-paint-on-red, pi. 42, d, f). After a considerable time glaze painting 
and red backgrounds declined more or less together, and were replaced by light 
backgrounds (buff or white). Glaze-paint, although it lingered upon the white 
















PLATE 42 



Little Colorado Pottery 







THE LITTLE COLORADO 


01 


backgrounds for a while, was steadily losing ground. This period saw the arrival 
of the Spaniards. During historic times dull-paint finally triumphed over glaze, and 
the wares gradually changed, and grew into the styles which are made atZufii today.* 
From the time of the introduction of the pueblo form of architecture the tendency 
was always toward a reduction in the number of towns and an increase in their 
size. 

Spier’s sequence of pottery ty])es is undoubtedly correct in its main outlines. Its 
correctness, however, will be thoroughly tested, and much valuable information will 
surely be added, by the excavations now being carried on by Hodge for the Museum 
of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, at the large Zuni ruin of Hawikuh, an 
historic pueblo founded in prehistoric times, whose rubbish heaps contain a splendid 
stratification of several of the more important wares in Spier’s chronological series. 

Hodge has, indeed, just published the following preliminary chronological 
classification of Hawikuh pottery, which in general confirms Spier’s results: 

“A. Black-on-gray; black-on-red; finely corrugated. Pre-Hawikuh period. 

B. Black or green glaze on red or orange-red. Corrugated much cruder. 
Earliest Hawikuh (prehistoric). 

C. Black, green, or })urplish glaze on white or creamy slip. Early Hawikuli 
(prehistoric). 

I). Black or green glaze on white or cream, with non-glaze colors introduced. 

This was the first stejj toward a pure mat polychrome. Prehistoric. 

E. Polychrome. Various colors were used and life-forms became much more 
common. The glaze decoration has disappeared. The range of decorative designs 
indicates two periods, one merging into the other, the first j)rehistoric, the second 
l)rehistoric but extending into the historic period. 

F. Recent glaze. The glaze, especially black, and green of varying shades, 
was revived, but the glaze was crudely aj^plied. This style of ornamentation seems 
to haA’e been gradually superseding the polychrome when Hawikuh was aban¬ 
doned. ”t 

Of the kivas of the Zuni area we have so far little information. Hodge states 
that the ceremonial rooms of Hawikuh, both ]:)rehistoric and historic, are rectangu¬ 
lar. J At a pre-Hawikuh site in the vicinity, which was built during Hodge’s period 
A, there were found by the iMusenm of the American Indian expedition two circular 
kivas. The excavation of these was so carefully done and the publication of the 
results is so full and clear that they may well serve as models for future work of the 
sort.** The two kivas lay side by side with remains of a house-structure to the 
north of them. They were round and subterranean, the larger seventeen feet, the 
smaller a trifle over fifteen feet in diameter. Each one was encircled by a low inner 
wall without roof-support pilasters; and each one contained a ventilating shaft 
opening in the floor, a deflector, and a rectangular firepit. In both kivas there was 

*Whole vessels of some of these wares are not at present available for illustration, but Spier (1917, 1918, 
1919) figures a representative series of sherds; and Fewkes (1909, b) gives some excellent color plates of early 
glazed ware from Zuni sites. 

tHodge, 1923, p. 29. 

JHodge, 1923. p. 10. 

**Hodge, 1923. 


9^2 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


sunk into the floor west of the firepit a rectangular, stone-lined vault. No traces of 
roofing were discovered. 

These two kivas show strong Chaco Canyon influence, but they appear to 
represent a sort of cross between the great kiva and the small kiva types. They 
resemble the great kivas in possessing an unpilastered encircling bench, and a 
rectangular firepit; the small kivas in having a sub-floor ventilating shaft, a 
deflector, and a single rectangular vault west of the firepit. 

The pottery found by Hodge in the undisturbed lower ])ortions of the kivas 
was black-on-white, black-and-white-on-red, and corrugated. The black-on-white 
is not, to my mind, of the typical Chaco style, but belongs to what I believe we 
shall eventually be able to recognize as a distinctive Little Colorado group 
influenced by Chaco ware and by the black-on-white of the Upper Gila (see p. 98 
below). Contemporaneousness of these kivas with the I pper Gila culture is 
indicated by Hodge’s discovery in the original undisturbed fill in one of them of an 
Upper Gila type corrugated bowl.* In view of finds made in the upper layers of the 
kivas this becomes a fact of great importance. The finds just mentioned con¬ 
sisted of the remains of two rudely made chambers built in the kivas, but well 
above their floors. They were obviously constructed after the kivas had been 
abandoned and had fallen into decay. They were identified by Hodge as of the 
Hawikuh period, for they contained pottery of several definitely Hawikuh types. 
Associated with these later rooms were several skeletons accompanied by mortuary 
pottery, also of Hawikuh types. ’With Skeleton no. 1, was a bowl of Lower Gila 
polychrome ware, and a Hawikuh Type C or D canteen with purplish glaze on a 
white slip.j The significance of the Tapper Gila corrugated bowl from the kiva 
proper and the Lower Gila bowl in a later grave and associated with a Hawikuh 
Type C or D vessel, will be reverted to in a subsequent section. Here I wish merely 
to call the facts to the reader’s attention, and to emphasize, as I did in the case of 
Judd’s observations on the Beaver City mounds (see p. 8*2), the great importance 
of careful observation and recording, particularly where there is the least suspicion 
of a superposition of the remains of different periods. Had Hodge merely dug out 
his kivas and burials, allowed the sherds from different levels to become mixed, and 
failed to note the small details of depth and position which allowed him to state 
positively that the burials belonged with the later rooms rather than with the 
earlier kivas, all these most valuable data would have been lost. Consideration of 
this particular case makes it seem likely that the strange mixtures of pottery types 
recorded by other students from some of the ruins of the Little Colorado valley 
were due to like reoccupations of sites, and that the evidence of such reoccupations 
was not recognized by the excavators. 

'We must now turn to the Hopi district in the extreme northern part of the 
Little Colorado drainage. Here no stratigraphic work such as that of Hodge has 
been done; nor have any comparative and statistical studies of the pottery been 
made comparable to those of Spier in the Zuni country. 'We have, however, 
thanks to Fewkes, an intimate knowledge of one very characteristic ware, and the 


*Hodge, 1928, pi. XXII, a; and see p. 97 below. 
fHodge, 1923, p. 31 and pis. XXIX, c; XXVIII, c. 


PLATE 43 



TYPICAL TERRACED PUEBLO 

Hopi town of Oraihi 











I 






«• 



M .-(U .■ 







THE LITTLE COLORADO 93 

writer has made brief recomioissances at a number of sites at and near the East 
Mesa. 

The general conditions diii)licate those in the Ziini country; that is to say, there 
are inhabited pueblos (pi. 43), a few early historic towns, and many prehistoric 
ruins. The recent wares of the Ho])i* are light colored, with decorations in 
brownish blacks and reds (see pi. 18, a); the light backgrounds are a dirty white, 
the slip being thickly seamed with fine cracks. A surface examination of the rub¬ 
bish-heaps below alpi and Sichomovi seems to show that this ware has been made 
for a long time. It must, however, have come into use after 1700, for the surface 
pottery at the nearby ruin of Awatobi, which was destroyed at about that date, is 
dissimilar to it. The latest Awatobi ware is much yellower in tone, its slip lacks the 
characteristic modern Hopi crackling, and the decoration in browns and reds is more 
skillfully applied. This ware, although better than modern Hopi, is much less fine 
than a third style which is also found at Awatobi and at various other sites, but 
which is best known as Sikyatki ware. The beautiful plates in Fewkes’ monograph 
on bikyatkif have made this pottery well known. Its surface color ranges from 
creamy white through the yellows to shades of flushed orange; the elaborate designs 
are executed with marvellous sureness and accuracy in brown-blacks and reds 
(pi. 42, g, h). The best pieces of the Sikyatki type are technically and artistically 
the finest ceramic products of the Southwest, ancient or modern. 

Sikyatki, the type site for this ware, is believed by Fewkes to be prehistoric.J 
Finds of Sikyatki pottery at Pecos seem to show that it a/ as contemporaneous with 
Rio Grande late Glaze 4 and early Glaze 5, which would place it in the late 
prehistoric period; this supposition is further borne out by its obvious family 
resemblance to the seventeenth-century wares at Awatobi. 

Sikyatki pottery is found well under the surface at Awatobi, and also occurs at 
a site below the mesa near Walpi, at Old Shumopovi, and at several other ruins. 
Mhat preceded the Sikyatki wares in the Hopi district has only just been de¬ 
termined. During the past summer I made a series of stratigraphic tests in the deep 
rubbish heaps of Old Shumopovi and the Jeddito Valley ruins of Awatobi, Neshe- 
patanga, and Kokopnyama.** At each of these sites I found underlying the Sikyatki 
wares similar but easily distinguishable i)ottery which I have tentatively called 
Jeddito yellow (pi. 42, e). It is decorated with brown-black paint alone, rather 
than with brown-black and red, and the vessel shapes and the ornamentation show 
plainly enough that it is directly ancestral to Sikyatki ware. Beneath the Jeddito 
yellow there occurred still older pottery of an orange-red shade, the ancestry of 
which is still unknown, but which may jjrove to be allied both to the Kayenta 
polychrome and to the early dull-black-and-white-on-red of the Zuiii series. These 
data show that the latest prehistoric Hopi pottery, the Sikyatki, is a local growth 
from local prototypes, and not, as had formerly been supjiosed, an importation by 

*Pottery making is now extensively carried on only at Walpi and Hano. By recent wares I mean those pro¬ 
duced prior to 1897; at that time the Hopi potters began to copy the fine old vessels unearthed by Fewkes at 
Sikyatki, and this archaistic style has now practically superseded the 19th-century pottery. 

tFewkes, 1898. 

JFewkes, 1898, p. 6.3G. 

**For the location of these sites see Hough, 190.‘1, })1. 82. 


94 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


clans from the Rio Grande. These local prototypes, first the orange-red and then 
the Jeddito yellow, were evidently contemporaneous with the early glazed wares of 
the Zuni district. 

The still older steps in the Hopi series are to be found at many almost obliter¬ 
ated ruins which contain only black-on-white and corrugated ware; some of this is a 
sort of amorphous stuff like generalized San Juan, some is quite distinctly proto- 
Kay enta and Kay enta. There are also in the Jeddito valley and at the East Mesa 
a number of unmistakable pre-Pueblo ruins, little slab-walled structures with 
characteristic black-on-white and neck-coiled black pottery. Finally, at two 
])laces on the East Mesa are small sites marked by a few scattered stones and 
containing sherds of typical rough, gray, unornamented post-Basket Alakervessels. 

To sum up, we have in the Hopi country the post-Basket Maker, pre-Pueblo, 
prehistoric Pueblo, and modern Pueblo cultures. The prehistoric Pueblo culture 
probably passed through, first a generalized, and later a more specialized, black-on- 
white stage. Then came a period when both degenerate black-on-white and a 
new orange-red style were in vogue. Black-on-white eventually disappeared and 
the Jeddito yellow ware became the predominating type. Toward the close of 
prehistoric times there developed from it the beautiful black-paint-on-yellow 
Sikyatki wares, whose influence certainly extended down into the Little Colorado. 
The early modern ware surely, and the late modern ware probably, grew from this. 

From the foregoing it will be seen that the general course of development in the 
Hopi and Zuni countries was virtually the same, particularly during the earlier 
phases. In the later prehistoric periods, however, specializations set in which 
became more and more pronounced, until at the time of the discovery in 1540 the 
two regions were marked by cultures which, ceramically at least, were quite distinct. 

I am not able to throw much light on the problems presented by the numerous 
and important ruins in the river valley of the Little Colorado and in its southern 
tributaries. An examination of the plates in the works of Fewkes and Hough* 
shows that the situation is by no means simple; there are vessels of all sorts, black- 
on-white, black-and-white-on-red, glazed, Jeddito yellow, and Sikyatki, as well as 
pieces of Kay enta, Tularosa, and Lower Gila types. This very complexity, how¬ 
ever, is encouraging, for it shows that the Little Colorado has been a meeting and 
mixing ground of several cultures. The discovery of stratified sites or, if such 
cannot be located, further work along the lines developed by Spier, will not only 
surely result in the solution of local ])roblems, but will also give us invaluable 
data as to the time-relations of many other Southwestern groups. 

As to time-correlations between the Little Colorado and the Rio Grande, we 
are provided with a good starting point by the fact that the upper ends of both 
series run into historic times and are therefore contemporaneous. Dropping to the 
bottom, we find each series beginning with more or less similar types of generalized 
black-on-white ware; this would also seem to imply approximately equal age for the 
beginnings of puebloan development in the two areas. The black-on-white period, 
however, appears to have lasted somewhat longer in the Rio Grande than in the 
Little Colorado, for fragments of the dull paint redware with white exterior decora- 

*Fewkes, 1904; Hough, 190S. 


THE LITTLE COLORADO 


95 


tion which succeeded the black-on-white in the latter region, have been found in 
otherwise pure black-on-white sites in the Rio Grande. The next stage, that of 
glaze-painting, began at about the same time in both areas, though it may perhaps 
have started a trifle earlier in the Little Colorado.* Evidence for these statements 
is provided by the finding of sherds of Little Colorado glaze-paint wares of Hodge’s 
Type B (see p. 91) in Glaze 1 strata at Pecos, and, indeed, in some very late 
black-on-white deposits at Pecos and at Rowe. 

The above correlation between these two regions, while by no means detailed 
or complete, is reasonably convincing. It depends in large measure upon the 
evidence of cross-finds of fragments of non-local pottery. Such fragments of 
vessels belonging to types not standard in a region, but which are characteristic of 
another region, are of the greatest importance for determining chronological 
relationships. It is immaterial whether the vessels were actually traded from one 
district to another, whether they were made by women married or captured into a 
tribe, or whether they were produced locally in imitation of foreign styles; their 
significance in showing contemporaneity is the same. I wish to lay particular stress 
upon this method of correlation as it is one which has proved very useful in the 
past, and may be depended upon to help us greatly in the future. To take full 
advantage of it, however, the field archaeologist must be a close student of ceramic 
types, and must be constantly on the lookout for fragments, no matter how small, 
which differ in any way from the run of material in the site that he is excavating. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LITTLE COLORADO 


ZuNi District 

Simpson, 1850, pp. 117-133. 

Cushing, 1886. 

Mindeleff, 1891, chap. III*. 

Fewkes, 1891*; 1909, b. 

Bandelier, 1892, pp. 326-345; 1892, a. 
Hodge, 1895; 1918; 1920; 1921; 1922; 
1923*. 

Kroeber, 1916; 1916, a. 

Spier, 1917*. 

Anonymous, 1918. 

Wissler, 1919. 

Hopi District 
Mooney, 1893. 

Mindeleff, 1891, chaps. I, II*. 


Bandelier, 1892, chap. IX. 

Fewkes, 1893; 1896, a; 1896, c; 1896, d; 
1898, pp. 577-742*, 1898, a; 1904, pp. 
111-134; 1919, a. 

Hodge, 1904. 

Hough, 1903, pp. 326-352*. 

River Valley and Southern Tributaries 
Nelson, E. W., 1884. 

Hough, 1902; 1903, pp. 289-325; 1920. 
Fewkes, 1896, b; 1898, b; 1900; 1904, pp. 

20-111, 134-168*. 

Palmer, F. M., 1905. 

Spier, 1918; 1919. 

Colton, M. R. F. and H. S., 1918. 

Colton, 1920. 


*See Kidder, M. A. and A. V., 1917, p. 354. 


THE I PEER GILA 


This district comprises the headwaters of the Gila in southeastern Arizona and 
southwestern New Mexico (fig. 18). The Gila river forks near the interstate 
border, one branch (still called the Gila) draining the high land north of Silver City, 
New Mexico, the other, the San Francisco, swinging northward to head in the 
mountains of northern Socorro county. New ^Mexico, just west of the barren San 
Augustin plains. Both these main tributaries run through rough, broken country, 
abundantly watered and for the most part heavily forested. 

Of the archaeology of the southern branch, the Gila proper, nothing, or next to 
nothing, is known. Bandelier states that there are numerous ruins, both surface 
sites and clitT-houses, and that the former are similar to the ruins of the Upper 
Mimbres. He also describes a small cliff-house on Diamond Creek.* As to the 
pottery of the district we are entirely ignorant. 

The northern fork, the Rio San Francisco, and its tributaries, the Blue and the 
Tularosa, are, thanks to the explorations of Hough,t much better known. This 
river system drains a high, broken, and in general well-forested region, with abundant 
water-supply but with rather limited amounts of land easily available for primitive 
agriculture. Because of this the ruins are confined, apparently, to the immediate 
vicinity of the watercourses, where there are stretches of alluvial bottoms suitable 
for corn-growing. It would seem, from Hough’s accounts, that nearly every 
locality of this sort contains vestiges of former occupation. The dwellings are 
situated on the crests of low ridges overlooking the flats, and although most of them 
have been reduced to more or less inconspicuous mounds, enough remains to show 
that they were fairly compact aggregations of living-rooms enclosing courts or 
plazas. The rooms are built of horizontally coursed masonry, but not enough 
excavation has been done to allow of any generalizations as to the details of arrange¬ 
ment or of architecture; nor do we know whether or not the buildings were more 
than one story high. Hough believes that there are kivas in these ruins, as, indeed, 
seems probable from the occurrence in them of round and square depressions. 
None, however, have been cleared for examination. 

The cemeteries usually adjoin the buildings, but burials are also encountered 
below the floors of rooms.J Interments were both at length and flexed; cremation 
was apparently not practiced except in the lower reaches of the San Francisco near 
its junction with the Gila.** 

One very striking feature of the culture under consideration is the abundance 
of offertory shrines. These occur on mountain tops, in caves, and at springs. 
Hough describes a large number of such shrines, the most important being the Bear 
Creek and Tularosa Caves, in each of which were found large deposits of offerings 
such as miniature imttery vessels and effigies, miniature bows and arrows, cane 

*Ban(Jelier, 1892. pp. .859-862. 
tHough, 1907, 1914. 
tHales, 1893, p. 537 . 

**Hougli, 1907, p. 44. 


THE UPPER GILA 


97 



cigarettes, carved wooden sticks, and many other objects })lainly ceremonial in 
nature. In cleaning out springs great numbers of small pots, chipped implements, 
and stone beads have been discovered. 

So little digging has been done in the San Francisco-Tularosa region that we 
cannot further characterize the culture as exemplified by the house-ruins. The 
pottery, however, of this district is very characteristic, and differs from that of any 
other part of the Southwest. Large lots of it are to be found in several museums, 
but they are unfortunately for the most part commercial collections, accompanied 
by few or no data, so that we know nothing as to the cireumstances of discovery or 
of the exact provenience of the specimens. It seems certain, however, that the 
bulk of the material came from ruins in the San Franeisco drainage. 

There are three wares: corrugated, blaek-on-white, and red. The corrugated 
appears in the form of large ollas of fairly good workmanship, but as I have never 
seen a whole vessel I can say nothing as to the shape. Another type of corrugated 
ware is, however, very abundant in collections. It is made of a high grade paste 
which allows the production of very fine work. The eommonest forms are rather 
flat-bottomed bowls eight to ten inches in diameter. The interiors of these bowls 
















98 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


are of a deep black color and highly polished (pi. 44, m-p). The black gloss was 
evidently obtained by the process in vogue today among the potters of Santa 
Clara pueblo, by smothering the fire toward the end of the burning with an 
application of pulverized fuel. The blacking, however, in the case of the Tularosa 
bowls was only produced on the interior, the exterior surfaces being brown or red- 
brown. In rare instances the exteriors are smooth, but usually they are wholly or 
partly covered with exceedingly fine corrugation, often tastefully patterned with 
decorative indentations (pi. 44, m-p). The coils in most Southwestern corrugated 
ware are relatively broad, running three to five to the inch; in the Tularosa bowls 
there are often as many as twelve to the inch. This fine corrugation may extend 
over the entire outside of the specimen, or may be confined to a narrow, filletdike 
band just under the rim. 

Black-on-white pottery is well-made, the slip bright, and the paint a sharp, 
clear black. Ollas have not been recovered, the only forms that appear in collections 
being pitchers, bowls, ladles, and eccentrically shaped pots. By far the commonest 
type is the pitcher, a round-bodied vessel with cylindrical neck and with a handle 
which extends from below the rim to the upper side of the body (pi. 44, i-1). A 
common feature of Upper Gila pitchers, occurring in forty to fifty per cent of all 
specimens, is the modification of the handle into the crudely modelled form of a 
small animal. The entire body of the animal may be shown (pi. 44, j), or the handle 
may be reduced to a small protuberance representing the head and neck (pi. 44, 
c, d, f). 

Black-on-white bowls (pi. 44, a, b) are relatively rare, their place having been 
taken, apparently, by the fine corrugated bowls. The few specimens that I have 
seen are decorated only in the inside, have rather steeply rising sides, and plain rims. 
Ladles, also, are uncommon; they are all of the bowl-and-handle variety. Bird- 
shaped, double-lobed, doughnut-like, and other small vessels of eccentric form occur 
in considerable numbers. 

The decoration of the black-on-white ware is elaborate and in most cases well 
painted. The most typical design is an involved interlocking device in contrasted 
black and hatching that is applied very skillfully to the rounded bodies of pitchers. 
It may be either angled (pi. 44, k, 1) or curvilinear (pi. 44, i, j). The necks of 
pitchers are usually ornamented with interlocking key-figures in solid black (pi. 44, 
d-f, i, j, 1). Other characteristic motifs are close-set small key-figures so arranged as 
to cover large areas (pi. 44, c), and fine herring-bone work in black lines (pi. 44,e,f). 

Redware is so rare in collections that I cannot give any adecpiate description of 
it. It seems, however, to appear in the form of bowls and pitchers, decorated with 
didl black paint. 

Pottery of the above types is commonly known as “Tularosa”, from the fact 
that most of the collections have come from the ruins in the valley of that river. 
While its headcpiarters was doubtless there and in the other tributaries of the Tipper 
Gila, it had a considerably greater range, and trade pieces are found in ruins at great 
distances from the home area. 

Ruins producing nothing but Tularosa pottery occur on the San Francisco 
from mouth to source, and on its tributaries, the Blue and the Tularosa. The 


PLATE 44 




c 


d 


e 


f 


g 


h 




n o 

Plack-on-wliite and corrugated wares of I pper Gila type 


in 


P 













r. 







I 


•>ri| 




• r 

»• -i 



\ 










THE UPPER GILA 


99 


numerous sites that are presumably to be found on the Upper Gila proper, north of 
Silver City, may also be expected to contain the same wares. I have been told by 
cattlemen that there are many ruins in the vicinity of Magdalena, New Mexico, and 
from their descriptions of the pottery it would seem to belong to the Tularosa type, 
which may thus be exijected to occur as far east as the Rio Grande and to extend 
along that stream from Socorro south to Elephant Butte. I have no evidence of its 
extension east of the Rio Grande. 

To the south Tularosa ware appears not to have j^enetrated the valley of the 
Mimbres; nor to the southwest is it found, as far as I know, on the Gila below 
Solomonsville.* In the northwest and north, however, the conditions are different. 
The White Mountain country, the Zufii district, and the Little Colorado contain, 
according to Spier, ruins which show an admixture of Tularosa wares. This ad¬ 
mixture is strong in the black-on-white ruins, may last into the early glaze 
period, but disappears in later times.f Tidarosa polished black bowls have been 
found by Morris at Aztec,!}: and Nelson has recorded fragments of the same sort of 
vessels from the upper layers of the Pueblo Bonito refuse heap.** 

The chronological relation between the Upper Gila culture and the groups to 
the north and west of it is fairly clear. It was contemporaneous with the later 
black-on-white periods in the San Juan and Little Colorado and may even have 
lasted long enough to be coexistent with the early glaze period in the latter district. 
How it compares in age with the Mimbres, Chihuahua, and Lower Gila cultures 
is not known, but the fact that bowls with polished black interiors are found 
only in the I^pper Gila and Lower Gila cultures seems to show some connection be¬ 
tween the two. Aly guess would be that the LTpper Gila antedated the Lower Gila, 
and passed on to it certain elements of pottery technique, jf 

Of remains earlier than the Tularosa in the Upper Gila district we have but one 
definite instance. In the vicinity of Luna, in the San Francisco valley. Hough 
discovered a group of about one hundred pit-houses. Upon excavation these proved 
to be circular structures about fourteen feet in diameter by five feet deep, and ap¬ 
parently to have had conical roofs of logs and earth supported by low, wattled 
sidewalls.The pottery was neck-coiled dark ware and black-on-white of a sort 
quite different from the Tularosa type and somewhat resembling the pre-Pueblo 
black-on-white of the San Juan. The primitive nature of these pit-houses and of 
the artifacts found in them would alone be quite sufficient to indicate that they 
antedate the true pueblo ruins of the neighborhood, but this was proved beyond 
question by Hough’s discovery of similar pit-dwellings underlying a rectangular 


*Fewkes figures some corrugated ware from Solomonsville that shows strong Upper Gila influence (1904, 
pi. LXVII). 

tSpier, 1919, p. 372. One site has only Tularosa pottery. See also Hodge, 1923, pi. XXII, a, showing a 
Tularosa bowl from a black-on-white site in Zuni valley. 

JMorris, 1919, p. 73. 

**In Pepper, 1920, p. 384. 

tfSince the above was written this guess has been practically confirmed by Hodge’s find of a Lower Gila poly¬ 
chrome bowl in a grave that lay above rubbish containing an Upper Gila corrugated vessel (Hodge, 1923; and see 
p. 92.) 

tJHough, 1919. 


100 


S O U T H AY E S T E R N ARCHAEOLOGY 


pueblo in the Los Lentes valley.* Although the still older Basket Alaker culture 
has not been certainly identified in this region, a number of Hough’s cave specimens 
have a suspiciously Basket Ylaker look.j 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE UPPER GILA 

Bandelier, ISO^, ])p. 359-365. Duff, 1897. 

Hales, 1893. Lvon, 1906. 

Heister, 1894. Hough, 1907*; 1914*; 1917; 1918; 1919*; 1923. 


*Hougli, 1907, p. 63 and 6g. 28; and Hough 1919, p. 409. 
fFor example, an atlatl; see Hough, 1914, pi. 20. fig. 2. 



THE MIMBRES 


riie ^Mimbres river rises in the Black Mountains of southeastern New Mexico 
and flows southward toward the ^Mexican border (fig. 18 ). Although it is tributary 
to the inland drainage system of northern Chihuahua, its waters sink into the sand 
on emerging from the mountains, and its lower course consists, except in times of 
exceptional flood, of an underflow which only appears here and there in the form of 
seep-springs. The upper river, however, is a fine running stream bordered by 
willows and cottonwoods. Its narrow valley contains many patches of easily 
irrigable and very fertile land; lower down toward the city of Deming, New Mexico, 
the country opens out into great barren flats and much of it is practically desert. 

Both Bandelier and Hough* mention ruins in the Mimbres valley, but no 
adequate descriptions of them were published until the appearance of a series of 
articles by A^ebster in the “Archaeological Bulletin”.f The very extraordinary 
pottery of this district was brought to the knowledge of students by Fewkes less 
than ten years ago.J 

Ruins in the Mimbres extend from an unknown distance below Deming to the 
headwaters of the river, and also occur in its western tributaries which drain the 
country about Silver City and Fort Bayard. Passing over for the present certain 
ruins that belong to another culture, we may say that the typical Mimbres sites are 
small stone-built pueblos of from five or six to forty or fifty rooms. They are 
situated, as are those of the Tularosa region, on ridges, or knolls, or slight swells in 
the valley bottoms, and show no particular desire on the part of their builders for 
defensive locations. The houses are in all cases badly preserved, but from the 
ground-plan of the Swarts ruin given by Webster,** and from a hasty personal 
examination of several others, it seems to me that these dwellings are typically 
puebloan, for they are composed of closely-set rectangular rooms grouped about 
courts, and both Webster and Duff believe that some of the houses were more than 
one story high.ft Further relationship to the northern pueblos is to be seen in the 
presence of the underground kiva. The important discovery that the kiva was in 
use by the ancient Mimbrenos was made by Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Cosgrove of Silver 
City. Ardent archaeologists, the Cosgroves have done everything in their power to 
preserve the fast disappearing ruins of their neighborhood; and have purchased and 
themselves carefully excavated a site near their home. In it they found a sunken 
rectangular room with firepit and ventilator, an undoubted kiva, by far the south¬ 
ernmost example of such a structure yet recorded. 

The burial customs of the Mimbrenos were peculiar. The bodies were placed, 
closely flexed, in excavations under the floors of living-rooms. Over the head in 


♦Bandelier, 1892, p. 350; Hough, 1907, p. 83. 
tWebster, 1912, a. 

JFewkes, 1914. 

**1912, a, pi. 25. 

tfWebster, a, 1912, p. 113; Duff, 1902, p. 397. 
tJCosgrove, 1923. 


102 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


almost every case was put a pottery bowl so inverted as to cover the skull closely. 
In the bottom of each such bowl a small round hole was broken in order to “kill” 
it ceremonially. 

Because so little excavation has been done the details of the ^Mimbres cnlture 
are practically unknown.* We are accordingly forced, as so often elsewhere in the 
Southwest, to rely upon the evidence of pottery for our knowledge of distribution 
and exterior relationships. Of Alimbres pottery there is fortunately a large amount 
in our museums, but the collections, having been made in all cases by commercial 
diggers, are inadequately labelled and few or no data accompany them. 

The wares are of two sorts, black-on-white and corrugated. Decorated red- 
ware very seldom occurs in pure Alimbres sites. The corrugated ware appears in 
the form of small pitchers and large full-bodied ollas with slightly flaring rims. 
The corrugations are narrow and therefore close-set; they are never, so far as I can 
tell from the sherds that I collected in 1922 from Alimbres sites, sharply notched or 
indented, being merely waved or roughly punched. Even this amount of decoration 
is uncommon. Before the pots were sun-dried, the corrugation was usually more or 
less worked over with some sort of smoothing tool which has given the surfaces a 
“ wiped ” appearance. 

The standard black-on-wdiite ware form is the bowd, ollas being unusual to 
judge by the sherds. A few’ small, narrow-mouthed vessels w’ere made,t but 
apparently no pitchers resembling those of Tularosa, or ladles of any sort. The 
bowds are relatively deep, run up to as much as fourteen or fifteen inches in diameter, 
and have rather steeply rising sides. The rim is usually straight (i.e., with no in- or 
out-curve), square topped, and well finished. Some bowds are slipped with wdiite 
on both exterior and interior, but the majority have slip only wdthin. The slip is a 
clear chalky white in most specimens, but it is very often overfired (?) to a yel¬ 
lowish. shade. In these cases the normally black paint of the decoration has turned 
to a bright red.J The paint when not so affected is a sharp, clear black. 

In bowds the ornamentation is confined to the interior. The rim is usually 
painted black. Below the rim comes a series of framers, either one or two wide 
lines, or a set of several very fine lines drawn close together. Lender the framers 
there is often a band of geometric decoration which leaves according to its width a 
larger or smaller open space in the bottom. 

The geometric decorations are extraordinarily well executed, w ith a delicacy of 
line and an accuracy of spacing unequalled in Southwestern ceramic art. Only a 
limited use is made of the key figure, the bulk of the patterns being based on 
opposed dentate elements in contrasted hatching and solid black. The nature of the 
geometric designs alone would be sufficient to distinguish Alimbres ware from all 
others, but it is further characterized by a most amazing profusion of naturalistic 


*An expedition sponsored by the Chino Copper Co., and directed by W. Bradfield of the New Mexico State 
Museum, has begun excavations in the Mimbres. A brief preliminary report indicating the great importance of the 
work has been issued (Bradfield, 1923). Mhen Mr. Bradfield's complete results are published, they will throw 
much light on this interesting culture. 
fFewkes, 1914, pi. 8. 

JThat this flushing to yellow of the slip and to red of the paint is due to some peculiarity in firing seems proved 
by the fact that it often occurs on certain parts of pieces the rest of whose surfaces are norma) black-on-white. 


PLATE 45 



After Fewkes Courtesj' Smithsonian Institution 

MIMBRES POTTERY 

Interior designs of Black-on-white bowls 





































THE :\I I M B R E S 


103 


drawings. These range from strange composite creatures, evidently mythical, to 
figures of animals, birds, fishes, insects, and human beings; and there are also many 
cases of true narrative depiction, such as hunting and trapping scenes, dances, and 
ceremonial observances. The figures are sometimes interwoven to a certain extent 
with the geometrical patterns under the bowl-rims, but are more commonly set clear 
in the large round spaces left in the bottoms of the bowls. A few examples are here 
shown (pi. 45), but to get a true idea of the richness and variety of the work one 
should consult the excellent pictures in Fewkes’s publications on Mimbres pottery.* 

True naturalism is so rare a ])henomenon in all Southwestern pottery decora¬ 
tion, particularly in the early phases marked by black-on-white wares, that its very 
high development here is most jDiizzling. When one takes into consideration the 
superlative excellence of the geometrical work on the same pieces, it must be granted 
that the ancient Mimbrenos were the most remarkable artists of the Pueblo area, not 
even excepting the yellow-ware j^otters of Sikyatki. In the case of the Mimbres, 
there is no question of the intrusion of a foreign art, for no such art exists else¬ 
where; and furthermore the Mimbres pottery is surely a development of the old 
stock wares of the Southwest, the black-on-white and the corrugated. In such 
an instance as this one is almost forced to see the influence of some forgotten 
individual genius, whose work so stimulated her contemporaries and successors as to 
result in the founding of a local school or tradition in j)ottery design. 

As the Mimbres culture is at present known to ns only by its pottery, we cannot 
as yet say what its exterior affiliations may be in other respects; but the appearance 
of the ruins (and the general nature of the pottery as well) would lead ns to identify 
it with the Pueblo civilization, and to place it chronologically in middle Black-on- 
white times. It does not seem to have been exactly contem])oraneous with the 
Tularosa culture, for, so far as I know, no Mimbres specimens have turned up in 
Tnlarosa collections, or vice versa, in spite of the fact that the two districts lie close 
together.! We have so far but a few bits of relative chronological evidence. 

It will be remembered that in the third jiaragraph of this section certain ruins 
in the Mimbres country were mentioned that belonged to another culture. 
These are sites about Deming (the Black Mountain ruin is the only one which I 
have visited) that without question are of Lower Gila affiliation, the pottery being 
preponderantly of Lower Gila types.! Now at the Black Mountain pueblo there 
is also a very strong admixture of Chihiiahna (Casas Grandes) sherds, but no 
Mimbres ware at all, although typical Mimbres ruins lie within a few miles of 
the place. Some sixty miles northwest, on Duck Creek, a tributary of the Gila, 
is an unnamed ruin, one or two rooms of which had at the time of my visit 
been recently j^artly cleared out. The sherds on the slopes below this site were a 
mixture of Lower Gila and Mimbres wares. On examining the excavated rooms, 
however, it was seen that the sherds protruding from the earth still left in them were 
mostly Lower Gila with a few Chihuahua specimens, but those embedded in the 
adobe of the walls were straight Mimbres. All of which of course indicates that the 

*Fewkes, 1914; 1916, c; 19^2; 1923, a; 1923, c. 

fMr. Cosgrove informs me that he has never found Tularosa sherds at any of the Mimbres ruins he has 
examined. 

JSee Fewkes, 1914, p. 13. 


104 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


houses were built by Mimbreiios and later occupied by people of Lower Gila culture. 
Lower Gila and Chihuahua being approximately contemporaneous, these data 
practically prove that Mimbres preceded them both. 

The pottery of the Mimbres has, as I pointed out several years ago,* certain 
points of resemblance to that of Chihuahua; the likeness is to be seen in the use, 
by artists of both areas, of negative drawing, and in the forms of certain bird and 
serpent heads. As the Mimbres ware is without much doubt earlier than the 
Chihuahua, the above similarities must be accounted for, I think, by Mimbres 
influence on the formative stages of the Chihuahua culture, which, as will be shown 
below, appears to be a mixture of Pueblo and Mexican elements. 

I have gone into these matters at length in order to bring out the fragmentary 
nature of our present knowledge and the need of careful stratigraphic and analytical 
studies. Data to settle these questions positively are to be had; it is merely neces¬ 
sary to do more field work and to keep the problems constantly in mind. 

We have as yet no evidence as to the presence of antecedent cultures, pre- 
Pueblo or earlier, from the Mimbres. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE MIMBRES 


Hensliaw in Putnam, 1879, pp. 370-371. 
Bandelier, 1892, pp. 350-358. 

Taylor, 1898. 

Duff, 1902. 

Hough, 1907, pp. 83-89. 


Webster, 1912; 1912, a*. 

Fewkes, 1914*; 1915; 1916, b; 1916, c; 

1922; 1923, a*: 1923, c*. 

Bradfield, 1923*. 

Cosgrove, 1923. 


'Kidder, 1916, p. 268. 





Courtesy Bureau of Ethnology 


















THE LOWER GILA 


The country we are about to consider comprises the valley of the Gila from 
Solomonsville, Arizona, west to Gila Bend; it also includes the lower valley of the 
Gila’s great northern tributary, the Salt, and that of its southern affluents, the 
Santa Cruz and the San Pedro (fig. 19). This is a very large stretch of territory and 
is in many respects different from any which we have so far taken up. The average 



elevation of the land is much less, there is little rainfall, the winters are mild and the 
summers exceedingly hot. Vegetation is correspondingly scanty, and many southern 
desert growths appear. In spite of the general barrenness of the country much of 
the soil along the rivers is very rich, and where water can be got upon it is of amazing 
fertility. 

The archaeological remains are also unlike those of any of our other districts, 
and are in some ways so aberrant that, were it not for the pottery, we should be 
forced to consider that we had overstepped the limits of the Southwestern culture 
















106 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O O G Y 


area. Although little is known of the ruins, they all seem to have certain features 
in common. It is wisest, therefore, to consider first one of the few sites that has 
been carefully studied. The best known ruin of the Lower Gila region is Casa 
Grande (pi. 46), a site discovered in the early historic period, frequently described 
by explorers and archaeologists, and recently excavated by Fewkes.* It consists of 
a large five-roomed central structure forty feet long by sixty feet wide. The massive 
walls are of adobe and formerly extended to a height of at least three stories. About 
it are lower buildings, also of adobe, made up of large but not uniformly sized 
rectangular rooms. The whole is surrounded by a heavy adobe wall probably once 
seven or eight feet high; this forms a rectangular enclosure some 420 feet long by 
230 feet wide (pi. 47). Fewkes has very aptly termed groups of this sort “com¬ 
pounds”. There are several others in the immediate vicinity, smaller than Casa 
Grande, but closely similar to it. In one of them, “Compound B”, are both 
adobe buildings and the remains of less solidly made houses, the walls of which 
consisted of upright stakes covered with mud.t Some of these houses were congre¬ 
gated on large, low, pyramidal sub-structures. The method of erecting adobe walls 
in the various Casa Grande buildings much resembles modern concrete-work. To 
quote AlindelefF, “The walls are composed of huge blocks of earth, three to five feet 
long, two feet high, and three to four feet thick. These blocks were not molded and 
placed in situ, but were manufactured in place. The method adopted was probably 
the erection of a framework of canes or light poles, woven with reeds or grass, 
forming two parallel surfaces or planes, some three or four feet apart and about five 
feet long. Into this open box or trough was rammed clayey earth obtained from the 
immediate vicinity and mixed with water to a heavy paste. When the mass was 
sufficiently dry, the framework was moved along the w-all and the operation 
repeated.”! 

The rectangular compound as seen at Casa Grande is evidently the unit of 
Lower Gila architecture. A village might have consisted of one or several com¬ 
pounds, each having a large central building, a number of smaller houses, and a 
heavy surrounding wall. The exact function of the different elements is unknowni, 
but it seems likely that the large central structure was a sort of temple. The 
smaller houses may have been ceremonial in nature, residences of priests, or, less 
]3robably, the dwellings of the people. Alost observers, however, seem to believe 
that the commoners lived in more perishable quarters, perhaps such log-walled 
houses as were found in Fewkes’s Compound B. In any case the whole conception of 
a Lower Gila community of the Casa Grande type is radicallj’’ unlike that of a 
Southw'estern pueblo, wFich has no single dominating structure, either religious or 
residential, and in wdiich the living-rooms of all the people are identical in size and 
construction. The Casa Grande groups seem to have been laid ont on lines very 
similar to those of Central Mexican communities, and the resemblance is still 
further heightened by the pyramidal substructure seen in Compound B. 

Sociological conditions are abvays strongly reflected in architecture and 


*For early accounts of Casa Grande see Fewkes, 1912, pp. 53-81. 
tFewkes, 1912, pi. 26. 
tAIindeleff, 1896, a, p.310. 



















THE LOWER GILA 


107 


village planning; hence it is to be inferred that the people of the Lower Gila 
were organized on a different and ])robably a less democratic basis than were the 
true Pneblos. The resnlt of this may perhaps be seen also in the extraordinarily 
elaborate irrigation works executed in the district, works so extensive as to hint 
at the existence of a strongly centralized form of government.* 

In such of the Lower Gila ruins as have been excavated evidence of two kinds of 
mortuary customs have come to light: cremation and inhumation. Cremation 
would apj^ear to have been the commoner method. The bodies were burned on 
large ‘pyral mounds”, and what fragments of bones were left unconsumed were 
enclosed in jars and buried in the edges of the mounds. Offerings of ceremonially 
broken (“killed”) pottery were frequently placed about the cinerary urns.f In¬ 
humation seems to have been less regularly practiced; in most such cases the body 
was placed in a hole dug in the floor, or even in the wall, of a house or temple structure 
and carefully mudded in, thus occupying a sort of adobe sarcophagus. Alortuary 
pottery with such burials was seldom “killed”. Cushing believed that these two 
methods of disposal indicated a difference in the rank of the dead; the common 
people being cremated, the priestly class interred.J Although this is, of course, 
quite possible, and indeed the general lay-out of the Lower Gila settlements seems 
to suggest that a sociologic system involving strong differentiation between classes 
and masses was in force in that district, yet it is perhaps even more likely that the 
two sorts of mortuary customs represent a change in cidture, and accordingly a 
more or less considerable lapse of time. As will be brought out in the discussion of 
the pottery, two distinct groups of wares come from the Lower Gila ruins, wares so 
unlike as to raise the suspicion that they may even have been manufactured at 
different periods. The accounts of both Cushing and Fewkes, the only investi¬ 
gators who have done any excavation in these sites, indicate that there are large 
deposits of refuse at and about the ruins, and it is unfortunate that neither of them 
were able to make any stratigraphic studies. It is certain that important chrono¬ 
logical information could be obtained from the Lower Gila. 

Although the architectural remains of the Lower Gila communities present 
many non-southwestern features, the culture of the district is in certain respects 
surely allied to that of the Pueblos. This is illustrated most clearly by the pottery. 
Lower Gila vessels, although aberrant in certain respects, are in shape and in 
technology very similar to those of the country to the north and east; and in the 
decoration many typical Southwestern elements are to be recognized. 

There are three principal wares: plain red, polychrome red, and red-on-gray. 
Very little corrugated pottery appears in collections from these ruins; and when 
it does, it is in the form of small sherds. 

The plain red pottery occurs in three varieties: (1) LTnslip})ed pieces of a light 
brick red color; ('2) slipped pieces of a richer red with black firing clouds; (3) large¬ 
mouthed pieces (bowls, dippers, etc.) with polished black interior. 

The base-clay of all these is reddish gray and of rather coarse texture, thickly 


*See Hodge. 1893. 
fCushing, 1890, p. 172. 
jCushing, 1890, p. 174. 


108 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


but not grossly tempered witli finely ground ])articles of quartz or some other 
silicious rock. The second and third classes differ from the first only in the addition 
of a slijD, which in both of them is rich turkey red and often contains a considerable 
amount of powdered mica. The surfaces of both are well smoothed and in some 
cases made glossy by means of the rubbing-stone. 

The most interesting specimens are the bowls and dippers with polished black 
interiors, as they remind us of like wares from the Uj^per Gila, the Chihuahua basin, 
and modern Santa Clara. The exteriors are always red, some with and some with¬ 
out firing clouds; the interiors are a deep jet black, often bluish or greenish in certain 
lights. The surface is very highly polished, smooth, even, and glossy (pi. 48, b). 



Fig. - 20 . Lower Gila vessel-shapes 


Bowls are all straight rimmed; there is never any in-or out-curve, bevel, or 
thickening. The largest examples are shallow, with a flat base and flaring sides 
(fig. 20, a). From this they shade gradually off into smaller and relatively deeper 
types (pi. 48, b; fig. 20, b), and so pass into tiny handleless cups (fig. 20, g). 

Cups and mugs (pi. 48, a; fig. 20, i) occur in great variety both of size and shape. 
Apart from the difference in color they are quite unlike the mug form of Mesa 
Verde black-on-white ware in that the handle never runs to the bottom of the side. 
Some of them are not over one and one-half inches high by two inches in diameter, 
and are shaped almost exactly like modern teacups. From this form they run up 
through larger replicas of the same to mugs (fig. 20, i), the biggest examples being 
ten inches to twelve inches high. None of them have constricted necks like the 
])itchers of other regions. The handles are heavy, being com])osed of a solid round 























PLATE 48 



Lower Gila pottery 


Courtesy Peabody Museum 









THE LOWER GILA 


109 


bar of clay. Ihey run from just below the rim to a point about halfway down the 
side. A few examples of the taller types are not provided with handles. 

Dippers (fig. 20, e, f) are so called to distinguish them from the ladles of other 
regions, although they doubtless served the same functions. They have no true 
handles and are thus really bowls, modified by having part of one side somewhat 
elongated and bent outward and made into a sort of “tab” by which the piece can 
be lifted. A few of them distantly resemble the “half-gourd” ladle, but the 
sha])e of the majority is very distinctive. The inner surface of these dippers 
is almost always ])olished black. Bird or foot-sha])ed pots are very common 
(fig. 20, d). 

Ollas vary a great deal, but there seem to be two main types with a number of 
intermediate examples between them. The first may be called the “high-necked 
olla” (fig. 20, h). It has a rounded, sometimes recurved, imderbody, a very wide and 
sharp shoulder, and a straight cylindrical neck, which is usually between one-third 
and one-half of the total height of the vessel. Most of these ollas are from fifteen to 
twenty inches high. 

The second class, “round-bodied” ollas (fig. 20, j), are less nniform in shape, 
the variations being jjrodiiced by the raising or lowering of the point of greatest 
diameter. In general these ollas are smaller than the “high-necked” variety, but 
in the Peabody Museum collection fragments are preserved of a vessel of this 
form which was a})parently about six feet in circumference and two and a half feet 
high. Some modern storage jars reach proportions comparable to this, but I know 
of nothing in ancient pottery to approach it. 

Polychrome redware is the typical j^ottery of the Lower Gila. The base clay 
and general technology are exactly the same as in the plain red, Ijiit the pieces are 
more carefully finished. The black firing clouds, which in the plain red seem not to 
have been guarded against, or perhaps even to have been intentionally produced for 
their decorative qualities, are rarely seen on the polychrome. The visible surfaces 
bear a clear red slip, well polished, and upon this are applied bands and other fields 
of white slip, upon which, in turn, are j^ainted the decorations in black. The 
majority of designs are in black alone, but red is occasionally introduced to set off or 
complement some element of the main black device (pi. 49, c). It is never used, I 
think, in producing independent figures. 

Polychrome bowls fall into two classes: (1) those with rounded sides (fig. 20, b); 
(2) those with sides more or less vertical, with outciirving (fig. 20, c) or straight lip. 
In both cases the whole interior is slipped with white, and the black, or black and 
red, design applied over it. The decoration usually takes the form of an “all over” 
figure (pi. 48, d, e; pi. 49, d, e); less commonly it is a band leaving a round empty 
si)ace in the bottom. Bowls of Class 1 are plain red on the exterior. Class 2 bowls, 
however, bear an encircling band of white slip about the iqjper half or two thirds of 
the exterior, and this space is further elaborated with decoration in black, or black 
and red. The rims of both classes are generally left red, although in a few cases they 
are slipped with white (either wholly or in sections) and ticked with black. 

Cups, mugs, dippers, and bird-shaped pots do not differ greatly in shape from 
the like forms in plain red ware described above. Polychrome dippers are much 


110 


SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L 0”G Y 


rarer^than plain red ones, there being no perfect examples in the Peabody Museum 
collection. All these pieces have decorated zones of white slip. 

Ollas (pi. 48, f, g) are the handsomest examples of the polychrome technique. 
Injshape they form a somewhat less sharply defined type than do the high-necked 
plain red ollas; the shoulder is rounder, the neck lower and less cylindrical, and the 
underbody is not so flat. 

The bottom is uniformly red, and is cut oft* from the main decorative band by a 
broad black line, broken as a rule by an “exit space” (pi. 48, g). The two zones of 
ornamentation are, as usual, white with black, or black and red, figures. One 
encircles the body, another the neck. The two are almost always sej)arated from 
each other by a band of red. 

The decoration is usually in black, but, as was stated above, red counter¬ 
elements are sometimes introduced. The designs are strictly geometric; life forms, 
either plant, animal, or symbolic are entirely wanting. While curvilinear elements 
are common (pi. 48, d, f; pi. 49, b, c), angled patterns predominate, and chief among 
these are various modifications of the ubiquitous key figure (pi. 48, e, g; pi. 49, e). 
Bands consist of a series of repeated units, often worked into a current design by 
means of decorative connections between the units; interlocking scrolls with 
toothed backs occur again and again (pi. 49, c). A characteristic feature of Lower 
Gila art is the use of small triangles set along lines or on the margins of painted areas 
to produce a saw-tooth edge (pi. 48, e; pi. 49, d). 

In the case of bowl interiors where an “all-over” decoration is applied, it often 
takes the form of a dual balanced design in black or in black opposed to hatching 
(pi. 48, d, e; pi. 49, d, e). 

We now come to the red-on-gray ]>ottery. Judging from the small number of 
whole pieces of this ware in the Peabody Museum collections, it might seem to have 
been! rather uncommon, but an examination of the sherds from the ruins excavated 
shows that this was not the case. The base-clay is reddish yellow, containing a 
moderate amount of tempering material, some of which is crushed quartz and some 
a substance which may be either ground-up potsherds or tiny bits of tufaceous rock. 
The visible surfaces are treated with a grayish or buff-colored slip so thin as to be 
almost a wash. In it can be made out small particles of mica. The surfaces are well 
smoothed but are never polished, the finishing was done with an implement that has 
left numerous faint scratches and striations in the slip. The rubbing stone was 
obviously never used. 

The paint of the ornamentation is usually a sort of faded chocolate-red; it is 
dark crimson in certain examples that seem to have been particularly thoroughly 
fired. This pigment does not stand out sharply from the surface of the ware, but 
appears to have sunk into it, giving a flat, dull look to the designs. This is due, 
probably, both to the porosity of the ware and to the thinness and lack of body of 
the paint itself. 

Little can be said of the shapes of red-on-gray pottery, as so few whole pieces 
are available. A sort of globular cup with a single handle seems to have been a 
common form, and small ollas with very flat bases also occur. There are sherds of 
bowls and larger ollas in the collection. The former were apparently dish-like, with 


PLATE 49 



Designs of Lower Gila polychrome ware 



































































































































































THE LOWER GILA 


111 


flat bases and flaring sides (a type not seen elsewhere among ancient Southwestern 
pottery), the latter seem to have been more round in the body than })olychrome or 
plain red examples. Scoops or dippers are not rejjresented. 

In decoration red-on-gray ware is strikingly different, not only from the 
polychrome of this region, but also from all other groups of pottery in the South¬ 
west. The principal difference lies in the fact that the designs, instead of consisting 
of repetitions of bold geometric units, coherently arranged in bands, squares, or 
other definite zones and areas, are made up of series of tiny independent units, most 
of them evidently produced by a single stroke or “quirk” of the brush, and these 
are used as fillers of zones, or to give a sort of “texture” to the zone, rather than as 






^ ^ ^ ^ 
y -y y y y y ^ 
y y y V \ 

y y -y y y^ 

Ar ^ > Vv 


b 

3 jv 2 jy 2 jy 

uaJltiJUBJ 

aiuaiiisjua 


c 

30D0DDD: 

00000300 

OD000003 

f 


X ?i! * js,. 

9 h 

SIS15ISIS LTurjin 

/ ; 

Fic. "21. Lower Gila Red-on-gray tiesigns 


elements of a coherent ornament. I give a selection of these little elements (fig. 21). 
All of them are seen again and again on the sherds, arranged in series of lines, 
horizontal, vertical, and oblique. There are simple dots and dashes, crosses, an 
infinite variety of squiggles of all sorts, little crude swastika-like figures, and, most 
singular of all, numerous sets of small animal-like things (fig. 21, h) that pursue each 
other around and around the sides of bowls, ollas, and globular cups. 

All of these units are characterized by hasty, offhand brush work; they appear 
to have been scribbled on the pots with an eye more to general textural effect than 
to the achievement of true designs. They represent the impressionist school in 
ancient Southwestern art, and break very radically from the rigid formality that in 
general characterizes it. 




SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 




The same dash and lack of convention characterize also a rarer category of 
red-on-gray designs, some examples of which are shown (fig. 21, i, j). These consist 
of meanders, current motifs, inter-locking units, and waved and stepped lines. The 
circle and the spiral are of very common occurrence; hut terraced elements in 
general and the key figure in particular seem to be entirely absent. 

I have gone to this great length in considering the wares of the Lower Gila, 
because no adequate description of them has been published, nor are illustrations of 
representative pieces available in any book. The red-on-gray ware is especially 
interesting because, as was said above, it is so radically unlike the polychrome and, 
indeed, so unlike all other Southwestern pottery, that it gives rise to the suspicion 
that it may be the result of an intrusion from some hitherto unlocated culture 
centre; or may represent an early or a late period of local work. Careful excavation 
can be counted upon to clear up these points. 

In the minor arts the people of the Lower Gila turned out a number of objects 
not made, or at least not commonly found, in other areas. Their stone axes, for 
example, are of a peculiar type, with straight back, and three-quarter groove; 
they are fashioned from hard black stone, and are beautifully shaped. Another 
peculiar class of objects are miniature effigies of frogs, birds, and animals cut from 
shell or from thin flakes of stone. Shell was much used for bracelets, finger rings, 
and pendants.* Flat, rectangular slate palettes with decorated borders are also 
found at Lower Gila sites; never, as far as I am aware, in other parts of the South¬ 
west. 

The Lower Gila culture had an extensive range. The easternmost ruin of 
which I have knowledge is in the IMimbres valley, at Black Mountain near Deming, 
N. M.f The pottery of this site is typical of the Gila, as Fewkes points out; but the 
building itself, as far as I could tell from surface indications, was a rectangular adobe 
structure made up of a double or trij^le tier of cell-like rooms surrounding a large 
plaza; I could not make out, nor does Fewkes mention, any large central “temple”. 
Hence this ruin seems to be more like a pueblo than a true Gila compound. No 
red-on-gray ware appeared on the mounds, but I noticed a considerable admixture 
of sherds of Chihuahua (Casas Grandes) type. 

Some seventy-five miles to the west, however, in the Pueblo Viejo valley near 
Solomonsville, Arizona, on the Gila, there are evidently real comj^ounds. The ruins 
mentioned here by Fewkes are large, are enclosed by walls, and contain great 
central structures; they produce tyjjical Lower Gila polychrome ware, but seem to 
contain no red-on-gray. Both cremation and inhumation occur.J For the next 
seventy-five miles downstream we have no data for the Gila, but from a little east 
of Florence, Arizona, and thence almost if not quite to Gila Bend, the valley con¬ 
tains a considerable number of typical compounds, including the famous Casa 
Grande ruin itself. In the San Pedro Valley, which enters the Gila from the south 
between Solomonsville and Florence, are rJiins apparently of compound type, and 


*Axes are well illustrated by Fewkes (19H, pis. 49-5G); effigies (ibid. pi. 7.5, b; and Moorehead, 1906, fig. 47); 
bracelets (Fewkes, 1912, fig. 48); rings (ibid. pi. 75, a, and fig. 49). 
fFewkes, 1914, p. 13; and p. 103 above. 

JFewkes, 1904, pp. 168-187. 


THE LOWER GILA 


113 


there are many others in the Santa Criiz drainings, notably near Tucson.* Lastly 
the great group of ruins investigated by the Hemenway Expedition under Cushing, 
lies in the valley of the Salt, fifteen to twenty miles above its junction with the Gila.f 

The culture represented by these enormous adobe constructions, and by the 
easily recognizable types of pottery that seem always to accompany them, is a 
most interesting one, and it is a pity that we know so little in detail with regard 
to it. Fewkes’s work at Casa Grande was hampered by the necessity of repair¬ 
ing the buildings, so that he was unable to devote himself to the purely archae¬ 
ological problems encountered; and Cushing’s excavations were very inadequately 
published. The pressing need is for stratigraphic research, to determine whether 
or not there is any chronological distinction between the polychrome wares and the 
remarkable red-on-gray group. Reconnoissance should also be carried out in the 
Gila country, in order to ascertain if it was ever occupied by makers of black-on- 
white pottery. At present there is no evidence that this ware, so typical of the 
earlier phases of Southwestern development, occurs in the Lower Gila. 

As to the age of the compounds we have some hints. We know that the 
characteristic polychrome pottery is later than that of the Mimbres (see p. 104), 
and we suspect the Mimbres wares to have been made in middle Black-on-white 
times. Lower Gila polychrome vessels have been found in Little Colorado sites, as 
at Stone Axe ruin, where was also found buffware of probably late prehistoric date; 
but Tularosa type vessels also came from this ruin or group of ruins, as well as red 
vessels with white exterior decoration, which appear to be earlier than the buffware, 
so that it is uncertain just where the Gila pieces fit into the Little Colorado series.| 
Hodge, however, has discovered Gila ware at Hawikuh, in the Zuni country, in 
association with pottery of his Class C, a fairly late prehistoric ware (see p. 91). 

The chronological relation between the Lower Gila and the Chihuahua (Casas 
Grandes) culture is clear enough. Their contemporaneity is established by many 
cross-finds of pottery,** and by the mixture of the characteristic wares of the two 
cultures at several sites in southern New Alexico, for example, at the Black Moun¬ 
tain ruin. 

While neither the Lower Gila nor the Chihuahua cultures can yet be posi¬ 
tively correlated in time with any of the groups we have previously considered, I 
feel sure that they were in their prime toward the end of the prehistoric period, per¬ 
haps at about Glaze 1 times in the Rio Grande, and after most if not all of the 
pure black-on-white cultures had passed away. 

Belonging geographically to the Gila drainage are the many ruins of pueblos, 
cliff-houses, and caveate lodges that occur in the Verde valley. I have never had the 
opportunity of visiting these sites, and the descriptions given by Mindeleff and 
Fewkesft are derived almost exclusively from surface observations. For this reason 
they contain so little information as to the details of Verde archaeology (the pottery, 
for example, is nowhere properly described) that it seems wiser not to attempt 

*The Gila, San Pedro, and Santa Cruz sites are described by Fewkes, 1909, a. 

tBaxter, 1888; Cushing, 1890. 

JHough, 1903, pis. 57-64. 

**Kidder, 1916, p. 267. 

tfMindelefF, 1896; FeM’kes, 1898, pp. 536-576. 


114 


S O U T H W E S T E R N ARCHAEOLOGY 


to classify these sites at present. The pottery, according to Fewkes,* is princi¬ 
pally black-on-white and corrugated. This would appear to indicate early 
occupancy and northern, possibly Kayenta, affinities. 


RIBLIOCiRAPHY OF THE LOWER GILAf 


Bartlett, 1854, vol. H, ])p. 27'2-'277. 

Burr, 1880. 

Baxter, 1888. 

(hi-shing, 1890*. 

Bandelier, 1892, chaps. X, XI*. 

Fewkes, 1892; 1904, pp. 168-192; 1909, 
a*; 1912*. 

Hodge, 1893. 

Matthews, 1894. 

^lindeleff, 1896, a*. 


Moorehead, 1898; 1906. 

Patrick, 1903. 

Huntington, 1914, chap. VII. 

^’ERDE District 
Mearns, 1890. 

Hall, 1895. 

Mindeleff, 1896*. 

Fewkes, 1896; 1898, j)p. .536-576*; 1912, a. 
Spier, 1919. 


*1898, p. 70. 

fFor early accounts of Casa Grande see Fewkes, 191-2, pp. o3-81. 


THE CHIHUAHUA BASIN 


This, the last ^reat area of specialization definitely associable with the South¬ 
western culture, lies in the northern part of the IMexican state of Chihuahua (fig. 5, 
p. 47). Bounded on the west by the high chain of the Sierra IMadre, and on the 
east by lower mountain ranges, is a long, wide valley. The waters which drain into 
it from the Sierra iMadre have no outlet to the sea, but flow into a series of salt 
lakes, such as the Lago de Guzman and the Lago de Santa Maria; the Mimbres also, 
geographically speaking, empties into this basin; but actually goes dry far to the 
north of it. Ihe eastern and northeastern jiart of the plateau is largely desert, but 
its southern and western slopes are beautiful rolling uplands, covered with long 
grass, well-watered, and forming one of the finest cattle-ranges to be found anywhere. 

The archaeological remains are situated for the most part in the western side of 
the basin. They consist of mound ruins and cliff-honses. The mound ruins extend 
from about the American border to an undetermined distance southward. The 
majority of them have become reduced to low, inconspicuous piles of adobe, and 
only one survived into the last century in anything approaching a good state of 
preservation. This ruin is the .so-called Casas Grandes group, which lies on the 
Casas Grandes river, a southern tributary of the Ascension.* Although Casas 
Grandes was in fair condition when it was examined by Bartlett in the early ’50’s, 
as well as when Bandelier saw it some thirty-five years later, it has recently been 
so badly destroyed that when I visited it in 19‘2'2 only a few fragments of wall 
remained standing. The outlines, however, of the structures described by the 
earlier writers could still be made out, and the ground plans of certain rooms 
were plainly discernible. 

Casas Grandes was a massive adobe building standing to a height of at 
least three stories. The walls were built of puddled adobe blocks cast in place in 
movable frames by the same method that was employed at Casa Grande on the 
Gila. The rooms were large and rectangular, and were grouped together to form a 
great central structure with lower buildings about it. Were it not for the absence of 
a surrounding wall, the ruin would closely resemble a Lower Gila comijound. 

The other mound sites in the Chihuahua basin are, as was said above, so 
reduced by decay that little can be learned from a surface examination of them, and 
none have so far been thoroughlj" excavated. From Lumholtz’s descriptions, how¬ 
ever, and from the few observations I was able to make on the sides of pot-hunters’ 
diggings, it appears that the buildings which once occupied these sites were much 
less massive and less extensive than Casas Grandes. The walls of all of them are of 
adobe, but they are generally not more than a foot in thickness, as against three or 
four feet in some of the Casas Grandes walls. The rooms, too, are smaller, and seem 
to have been built in rows about square or rectangular courtyards, thus approxi¬ 
mating the pueblo arrangement. 

It would seem, then, that the practice of “great-house” building was less 

*There is a confusing similarity in the names of the principal ruin groups of the Lower Gila and Chihuahua 
Casa Grande is the Lower Gila ruin, Casas Grandes the Chihuahua site. 


areas. 


116 


SOUTHWESTERN A R'C HAEOLOGY 


developed in the Chihuahua basin than on the Lower Gila, and that Casas Grandes 
was an exceptional rather than a typical structure*. That it was at least approxi¬ 
mately contemporaneous with the smaller settlements is proved by the fact that 
the pottery from Casas Grandes and from the small sites is about the same. I say 
“about” advisedly, for there do appear to be slight differences in wares from Casas 
Grandes and from some of the less conspicuous sites, and in one mound near Cor- 
ralitos I found evidence in an old pot-hunter’s hole, of a cruder style underlying the 
later and finer wares of the upper levels. The data, however, are insuflScient. 

The burial customs of this region were apparently very uniform. Cremation 
was not practiced. The bodies were flexed tightly and disposed of in holes under 
the hard adobe floors of the rooms, usually in the corners and often four or five 
together. With the dead were placed offerings of shell and turquoise beads, as well 
as the beautiful pottery vessels that have caused the mounds to be so thoroughly 
ransacked. 

Chihuahua pottery or, as it is more commonly called, Casas Grandes pottery, 
is represented by large collections in several museums, but unfortunately it is 
mostly unlocated, as the bulk of it was dug by Mexican peons and sold to traders 
and ranchers. It is very fine, harmonious in color, and in accuracy of line-work is 
not surpassed by any other class of Southwestern ceramics. There are five styles: 
rough darkware, corrugated ware, polished blackware, redware, and polychrome 
painted ware. 

Of the rough darkware only sherds are known. They indicate olla-shaped 
vessels of considerable size. Corrugated ware also is only represented by fragments. 
The bulk of the pieces are of reddish paste, poorly coiled and with the indentations 
wiped over and nearly obliterated while the clay was still soft.f Polished blackware 
occurs in the form of bowls and small jars. It is excellently made and the glossy 
black surfaces are as fine as those of the best old Santa Clara pieces. Redware was 
used for a great variety of vessels, such as little bowls, medium-sized jars, and many 
odd-shaped pieces. The redware is occasionally painted with large fret designs in 
black, but is more commonly decorated by incision, gouging, scraping, or some other 
sort of surface texturing.+ 

The typical Casas Grandes pottery is the polychrome painted ware. It is a 
warm yellow color with decoration in black and red. The standard form is the jar 
(pi. 50), a gracefully shaped vessel seven or eight inches high. There are also many 
effigy pots made by adding animal, bird, or human heads to the sides and rims of 
jars (pi. 50, nos. 5, 7, 8, 9); and a few effigies of more realistic type.** 

While the decoration is elaborate, only a few design elements are used, and of 
these a considerable number are non-south western in appearance. The ubiquitous 
key-figure, however, is present, as well as the triangle and the scroll (pi. 50). 
“Negative”, or background, drawing is much used to produce life-designs such as 
birds and human figures. Altogether, Casas Grandes decoration is less puebloan 
than is anj- other class with which we have had to deal. It has obviously 

*BIackiston, however, mentious some larger ruins which may possibly have been great houses (1906, b). 

fCorrugated is not mentioned in my paper on Casas Grandes pottery (Kidder, 1916), as no specimens were in 
the collections then available for study. 

JFor illustrations of the above wares see Kidder, 1916. 

**See Kidder, 1916, pi. Ill; and Lumholtz, 190:2, p. 89. 


PLATE 50 



Pottery of the Chihuahua basin 


Courtesy Peabody Museum 
























THE CHIHUAHUA 15 A S I xN 


117 


assimilated a numl^er of Alexican elements, but its basic structure is nevertheless 
Southwestern. 

Aside from the pottery we have little knowledge of the minor arts of the 
builders of the adobe mound ruins. They ])roduced large quantities of fine shell 
beads and bracelets, but did not apparently make the little shell and stone carvings 
that were turned out so commonly on the Lower Gila. The inetate, according to 
Lumholtz,* was ])rovided with four legs, thus differing from all other Southwestern 
metates and recalling the Alexican type. The stone axe is common, and is beauti¬ 
fully made. It has the same straight back and three-quarter groove possessed by 
Lower Gila axes. This kind of axe is not found elsewhere in the Pueblo region, 
except sporadically on the Little Colorado, where its presence is probably to be 
ascribed to Gila influence. 

As to the range of the Chihuahua basin culture we have no precise information. 
It extended northward to the American border and perhaps even a short way into 
New Alexico. On the west it only here and there managed to work through the 
barrier of the Sierra Aladre into Sonora.f For the east we have no data at all, and 
for the south little more, although Hewett states that there are no “pueblos” 
south of the Babicora plains.J 

Something may be gleaned as to the exterior relationships of the culture. In 
architecture it is surely allied to the civilization of the Lower Gila, and that the two 
were at least approximately contem])oraneous is proved by cross-finds of traded 
l^ottery. It is connected in some way with the Alimbres, as is shown by similarities 
in design elements, and the use of negative painting; but the finds at the Duck creek 
ruin (see p. 103) seem to show that the Alimbres culture was the older. There is 
need for much more work in this most interesting area: first, reconnoissance to 
determine the range of the sites; secondly, excavation to find out whether or not 
there is evidence of a succession of types in the district; and thirdly, analytical 
studies of the remains, to enable us to ascertain which elements are Southwestern 
and which are Alexican. 

Another important question that should be investigated is the relation between 
the cliff-houses that occur in the Sierra Aladre west and southwest of Casas Grandes, 
and the mound ruins of the oi)en country. These houses are built in caves, are 
constructed of adobe, and bear a superficial likeness to the cliff-dwellings of the 
north. At present we have no idea whether they are earlier or later than the mound 
ruins; or, indeed, whether they were made by the same people at all. Of their 
pottery we know nothing, but Blackiston states that it is different from that of 
Casas Grandes.** 


15IBLIOGRAPHY OF THE CHIHUAHUA BASIN 


Bartlett, 1854, vol. 2, chap. XXX\ . 
Bandelier, 1892, chap. XIV*. 

Lumholtz, 1891; 1891, a; 1902, vol. I*. 
Saville, 1894. 


Hewett, 1908, chap. VHI. 

Blackiston, 1905; 1906; 1906, a; 1906, h; 

1908; 1909. 

Kidder, 1916. 


*Lumholtz, 190^^, vol. 1, p. 88; Bartlett illustrates one (1854, vol. 1, p. 362). 

tWhat appears to he Chihuahua-type pottery is described by Bandelier from Huachinera (1892, p. 517). 


JHewett, 1908, p. 76. 
**Blackiston, 1905, p. 361. 
and in Blackiston, 1906, 1909. 


The cliff-houses are described in that paper; also in Lumholtz, 1902, vol. I, chap. V; 


PART FOUR 


CONCLUSIONS 

The data, so far as we can summarize them at present, are now before us. It 
remains to combine them into some sort of coherent whole. This can best be done 
in the form of an historical reconstruction, but it must be remembered that such a 
reconstruction is merely a working hypothesis, designed to correlate our information, 
and to indicate more clearly the needs of future study. We must have no hesitation 
in abandoning our conclusions, partly or in toto, if contradictory evidence appears. 

To begin with, it is safe enough to postulate the former presence in the South¬ 
west of a more or less nomadic people, thinly scattered over the country, ignorant of 
agriculture and of pottery-making. Their life must have resembled closely that of 
the modern Digger tribes of the Plateau; that is to say, they dwelt in more or 
less makeshift houses, and subsisted principally on small game: rabbits, prairie dogs, 
and doves; and on such wild vegetable products as grass-seeds, berries, and roots. 
As to their language, it is less safe to speculate; but from the fact that peoples of 
Uto-Aztecan speech seem to have formed the basic population of the highlands from 
Montana far south into Mexico, it is quite likely that they belonged to that group.* 
Whoever they were, there could not have been many of them, for the natural food 
resources of the Southwest were probably, even in those ancient times, not suflScient 
to support more than a very small population. Remains of these aborigines have 
not yet been discovered, nor will they be easy to distinguish from those of such 
modern nomads as the Apache and Paiute, unless they are found buried below the 
relies of later cultures. 

These supposedly original Southwesterners eventually acquired the knowl¬ 
edge of corn-growing; they took up farming in a more or less haphazard way, but 
its practice did not at first react very strongly upon their way of life; for the Basket 
Makers, as we call the earliest agriculturists, apparently had no permanent houses, 
nor did they make pottery. As to the date of the introduction of corn we are still 
ignorant, but it is possible to make certain deductions. 

Corn was originally brought under cultivation in the highlands of Mexico or 
Central America. This general locality is indicated by the identification of the 
probable wild ancestor of corn, a heavy-seeded grass which grows only in that 
region.t How long ago Mexican agriculture began is unknown; the remains indeed, 
of the first farmers, the Mexican Basket Makers so to speak, still await discovery. 
Corn, however, is a very highly specialized cereal, a fact which would seem to 
indicate great antiquity. Be that as it may, corn-growing was without any question 
the factor which made possible the development of all the higher American civiliza¬ 
tions, and so the discovery of agriculture must have long antedated their rise. 
Now the Maya, apparently the oldest and certainly the most brilliant of these 

*See Goddard, 1920. 
jHarshberger, 1893. 


CONCLUSIONS 


119 


civilizations, was at its zenith during the sixth century of the Christian era; and its 
complex calendar system, which we must suppose to have taken several centuries to 
develop, had undoubtedly been i)erfected by the year 1 a.d.* It is, therefore, not 
rash to guess that the Maya began to differentiate themselves from the other 
archaic corn-growing ])eoples as long ago as 1000 b. c. Judging by the rate 
of progress made by nascent civilizations elsewhere in the world, it seems safe to 
allow at least two thousand years more for the period that elapsed between the time 
of the first cidtivation of corn (say at about 3000 b. c.) and the beginnings of the 
Maya culture.f During these two millenniums we must allow for the early, localized 
practice of agriculture in the highlands; and the subsequent very extensive diffusion 
of the primitive corn-growing, pottery-making complex known as the Archaic 
Mexican culture.J 

All this somewhat speculative time-reckoning does not help us directly in our 
attempt to arrive at an approximate date for the introduction of farming in the 
Southwest, and the consequent springing up there of the Basket Maker culture; 
but it does give us a certain sense of perspective, and makes it seem quite possible 
that the Basket Makers as we know them lived as long ago as fifteen hundred or two 
thousand years before Christ. I believe, indeed, because of the simple and undif¬ 
ferentiated nature of Basket Maker corn, that the practice of corn-growing may have 
spread into the Southwest in the pre-Archaic period of Mexico, and that the 
influence of the developed Archaic is perhaps to be seen in the pottery and crude 
figurines of the post-Basket Makers. 

There is still another set of considerations which bear on the question of 
chronology, namely, the problem of whether the entire development of the Pueblo 
civilization was an autochthonous one, or whether it consisted of a series of cultural 
leaps stimulated from without. If the second supposition be true, the post-Basket 
Maker stage might have grown up elsewhere and imposed itself directly on the 
antecedent Basket INIaker, the pre-Pueblo on the post-Basket Maker, and the true 
Pueblo on the pre-Pueblo. Such a process would not necessarily have required a 
great stretch of time, for the long developmental stages of each culture might have 
taken place in other areas. 

When our knowledge of Southwestern archaeology was less full than it is today, 
transition stages between the main periods were not recognizable, and a theory of 
development by jumps or influxes seemed necessary to account for the observed 
‘ facts. Now that transitions are beginning to be found, it is becoming increasingly 
evident that the Southwest owes to outside sources little more than the germs of its 
culture, and that its development from those germs has been a local and almost 
wholly an independent one. This being the case, the time required must have been 
long, and the postulated date of Basket Maker origin of 1500 to 2000 b. c. does not 
seem at all improbable. 

At some early time, then, the Southwestern nomads took up the practice of 
corn-growing; but at first their agriculture sat lightly upon them; their crops were 

*Since the above was written Spinden has announced in the press the discovery that the Maya calendar 
was in use as early as the seventh century before Christ. 

fin this connection see Wissler, 1919, p. viii. 

JFor a valuable discussion of the Archaic, see Spinden, 19^22, Chap. I 


120 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


not of sufficient importance, nor had their methods of cultivation become intensive 
enough, to tie them very closely to their fields. Eventually, however, better care 
brought fuller harvests, and it became necessary to provide storage places for the 
garnered grain. Where caves were available they were used, holes being dug in the 
floors for caches. The population undoubtedly increased, and the leisure acquired 
from the possession of surplus food-stuffs, and the consequent partial release from 
the exacting requirements of the chase, allowed the people to work at, and to perfect, 
their arts, and to lavish time upon elaborate sandal weaves, fine basketry, and care¬ 
fully made implements. But they were as yet ignorant of pottery. 



Snell were the Basket IMakers. Their range is known to have covered south- 
central and southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona (fig. 22); but from the fact 
that the knowledge of agriculture and the seeds of corn reached them from the 
south, it is probable that tribes of similar culture occupied parts of New Mexico and 
southern Arizona, and stretched southward well into Mexico. It seems likely, 
however, that Basket IMaker culture reached its highest and most characterisHc 
development in the San Juan, for the cultures which appear to have developed from 















CONCLUSIONS 


U21 


it, and which ultimately spread out and gave rise to the later Pueblo civilization, had 
their origin, as will be shown presently, in that country. 

In the course of time the Basket Makers, becoming more and more dependent 
upon their crops, and correspondingly more sedentary in habit, either discovered 
for themselves, or (more probably) learned from tribes to the south, that vessels 
fashioned from clay, dried in the sun, and finally fired, were easier to make, and more 
suitable for holding water and for cooking, than the baskets that had hitherto 
served these purposes. At about the same period they began to enlarge their 
storage cists into dwellings, to wall them higher with slabs, and to provide them 



Fig. 23. Di.stribution of post-Fa.sket Maker sites as known at the present time 


with pole-and-brush roofs. These two great advances mark the opening of the 
post-Basket Maker period. That its culture was merely a developed phase of the 
Basket Maker there can be little doubt, the headform of the people remained the 
same, several old Basket-Maker arts, such as twined-woven bag making, held on in 
degenerate form, and the territory occupied includes most of the known Basket 
]\Iaker country. Post-Basket Maker remains occur throughout the whole San 
Juan drainage and also appear in the northern parts of the Little Colorado water¬ 
shed (fig. 23). 
















122 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


Guernsey has found indications that the pottery of certain post-Basket Maker 
sites is much cruder than that of others, and Alorris’s Long-Hollow settlements 
with their well-decorated black-on-white ware would seem to represent a late phase 
of the culture little inferior to the pre-Pueblo.* Thus we have a hint that the post- 
Basket Alaker period was a long one, during which a steady evolution in all the arts 
went on. 

There now comes one of the apparent breaks in continuity which formerly 
made it seem that Southwestern growth must have advanced in leaps stimulated 
from without the area. To be explicit: the pre-Pueblo, the next stage of which we 
have knowledge, shows a population with an entirely different headform. Further¬ 
more, the houses began to be grouped into more or less compact communities. 

It must be remembered that pre-Pueblo remains were known long before the 
discovery of the post-Basket Maker stage, and the gap between pre-Pueblo and 
Basket Maker was accordingly so very wide that it was hard to see any relationship 
between the two. With the post-Basket Maker culture now becoming understood, 
however, the break is being narrowed; we have the post-Basket Alaker slab-walled 
house standing between the Basket Maker cist and the pre-Pueblo dwelling, and 
the crude and advanced styles of post-Basket Alaker pottery to indicate a local 
growth in that art. The new and so far unexplained elements in the pre-Pueblo 
complex are the presence of the bow-and-arrow, the use of cotton, and par¬ 
ticularly the practice of skull deformation. 

The skulls of the Basket Alakers and jjost-Basket Makers are dolichocephalic 
and undeformed; those of the pre-Pueblo are, as far as we know, always artificially 
flattened posteriorly (pi. 33). This flattening renders it difficult to tell what 
the natural form of the head might have been, and it is possible that the mere 
introduction of hard-bedded cradles (a not very radical cultural change) might have 
caused this effect, and that the pre-Pueblos were really as long-headed as their 
predecessors. Aly feeling is, however, that the pre-Pueblo were actually of a dif¬ 
ferent physical type, naturally brachycejjhalic, and that their broad-headedness 
was merely accentuated by deformation.f 

It seems, therefore, that we must recognize the arrival in the Southwest of a 
new race, which eventually became the preponderating one, to the submergence 
of the old dolichocephalic strain. But (and this point deserves emphasis) the new 
people, if such they were, introduced no new cultural elements except cotton and 
perhaps the bow-and-arrow. The really vital traits, agriculture, pottery, and 
semi-permanent houses, were already in the possession of the post-Basket Makers. 
The broad-heads, then, merely took over the old way of life and added certain 
improvements; but in general carried it on in a perfectly normal course of develop¬ 
ment. 

The pre-Pueblo period saw some increase in the agricultural population of the 
Southwest and a considerable enlargement in the territory occupied. Pre-Pueblo 
sites are found throughout the entire San Juan country, as well as in parts of the 


*Morris, 1919, p. 194, and review of same by Kidder ami Guernsey (19!20). 

fFor a discussion of the relation between skull deformation and headform see Hooton, Peabody Museum 
Papers, vol. viii, no. 1, pp. 85-89. 


CONCLUSIONS 


123 


Rio Grande, the Little Colorado, and the upper Gila (fig. 24). Wherever this 
culture penetrated it resulted in the introduction of more or less permanent settle¬ 
ments and in the manufacture of black-on-white and neck-coiled pottery. It is 
piobable that as the houses became more solidly built, more drawn together, and 
more commonly above ground, there was evolved a rudimentary type of kiva, a 
ceremonial survival of the subterranean and semi-subterranean dwellings of former 
days. Such rooms have been found in association with pre-Pueblo ruins in north¬ 
eastern Arizona and southwestern Colorado,* both sites in the San Juan drainage. 



Fig. Distribution of pre-Pueblo sites as known at the present time 


The San Juan, indeed, appears to have been the breeding ground and place of 
dissemination of all the traits typical of the pre-Pueblo culture, for it is there that 
the remains are most abundant and most highly specialized; and as one goes out 
from the San Juan one seems to find the pre-Pueblo culture considerably less 
advanced. 

At the present time we possess enough data as to pre-Pueblo ruins to enable 
us to characterize them fairly accurately. We also have abundant data as to the 
developed Pueblo culture. But the small pueblo-like ruins that presumably were 

*Kidder-Guernsey, 1919, p. 43; Morris, 1919, p. 186. 















124 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


built during the transition period between the two are, as Morris observes,* prac¬ 
tically unknown. I use the term “transition” advisedly, for it is evident that there 
was no sharp break, either in culture or in race between pre-Pueblo and Pueblo. 
It is most important, then, that these small ruins be sought out and excavated, 
because in them we should find the germs of all the traits that were later developed 
and combined to form the classic Pueblo culture. 

Lacking these data, we are forced to proceed with our reconstruction on the 
basis of very scanty information. All we know is that scattered over almost the 
entire Southwest are little ruins built of horizontally coursed masonry, or of adobe, 
with closely grouped rectangular rooms and containing corrugated and black-on- 
white pottery. All such sites I class together as belonging to the early Pueblo 
period, for wherever they are even cursorily investigated they prove to have ante¬ 
dated the larger pueblos. The limits of their enormous range (fig. 25) extend from 
southern Nevada east and north to Great Salt Lake in LTah, east again to Colorado, 
down the edge of the Rockies to the headwaters of the Rio Grande, east again around 
the southern end of the Rockies practically to the Texas border, thence southwest 
across New Mexico to the neighborhood of El Paso, along the southern border of 
New Mexico, south of the headwaters of the Gila and Salt, along the southern base 
of the Mogollons, thence across to the edge of the western Arizona desert and so 
northwest to southern Nevada. The only parts of the Southwest in which so far 
no remains of the small-house, black-on-white pottery people of the early Pueblo 
period have been found, are the Lower Gila and the Chihuahua basin. 

Thus it appears that the early Pueblo culture spread far and wide over country 
which had not previously been occupied by pre-Pueblos. I speak of it with con¬ 
siderable confidence as a spreading, for it is virtually out of the question that so 
uniform a culture could have sprung up simultaneously and independently in 
several districts. We must, therefore, search for the point of origin, and all the 
information we now have points toward the San Juan drainage. 

It may, of course, be due to the fact that the San Juan has been more thor¬ 
oughly worked than other areas, but it is nevertheless very suggestive, that the 
most abundant and most highly developed exemplifications of the early cultures 
(the Basket Maker, post-Basket Maker, and pre-Pueblo) have been found in or near 
that country. And when we consider the early Pueblo remains we seem to see the 
same state of affairs. Early Pueblo ruins are very abundant in the San Juan, and 
they possess the traits most characteristic of Pueblo culture in greater perfection 
than do the early ruins in any other area. To be explicit: corrugated ware is at 
this period of marked excellence in the San Juan, and becomes progressively cruder 
as we proceed outward; the same is true, though perhaps to a less extent, in the case 
of black-on-white; the kiva also reaches an early high specialization in the San 
Juan, and becomes less common and less specialized the further away we get. As 
to other architectural traits we cannot yet speak, our data being still too scanty, 
but as will be shown in the consideration of a later period, the typical pueblo style 
of building also seems to have worked outward from the San Juan. 

Somewhere, then, in the San Juan, probably in the northern tributaries, the 


♦Morris, 1921. 


CONCLUSIONS 


125 


pre-Puebloans had begun to build their houses of horizontallv coursed masonry and 
to work their rooms into rectangular form. In so doing they were faced by the 
necessity of keeping certain round chambers, already used for ceremonies, separate 
fiom the house-clusters. These took on more and more the aspect of places apart, 
became specialized in construction and in function, and so finally developed into 
what we call kivas. At the same time the methods of pottery-making were im¬ 
proved; the neck coils of the pre-Pueblo water jars and cooking pots were found to 
be pleasing, and possibly also of practical value in increasing evaporation or the 
conduction of heat; they were accordingly extended to cover the entire bodies 
of the vessels. Black-on-white decoration became more varied. The above im¬ 
provements in architecture and ceramics were taken over by neighboring groups, 
and having, so to speak, a head start over most of pre-Pueblo culture, did not 
encounter the resistance of competition by other localized improvements. They 
accordingly spread very easily. How rapidly they spread we have at present no 
means of knowing, but from the fact that great territorial expansion involved very 
little change, it would seem that the process must have been a relatively quick 
one.* At all events the early Pueblo culture ultimately diffused itself well beyond 
the former range of the pre-Pueblo, and became planted, as has been said, in terri¬ 
tory not hitherto occupied by sedentary peoples. I think that this was not due to 
actual migration, but rather to a taking over of the culture by tribes who were 
already semi-agricultural, and therefore ready to embrace the manifest advantages 
of the new form of life. xU certain increase in jjopulation, however, must have been 
brought about by the greater ease of existence and security of food-supply; and this 
increase would naturally have been most rapid at the original point of diffusion, and 
so would have caused more or less outward pressure therefrom. 

I have tentatively located the centre of diffusion in the San Juan, and believe 
that because of the early advantage thus gained by the inhabitants of the San Juan, 
they continued for a long time to be the leaders in the development of Southwestern 
culture. They seem to have evolved, late in this period, the “unit-type” dwelling, 
a compact and eminently practical home for a small farming community, and one 
which, as Prudden originally suggested, appears to have had a very important 
influence on the form of all later pueblo structures. 

In assigning all small ruins containing true corrugated ware and more or less 
unspecialized black-on-white pottery to the early Pueblo period, I may of course be 
in error, it is wholly possible that some of the examples in the outlying regions may 
be peripheral survivals into much later times; but, as will be shown presently, the 
forces that tended to break up this early widespread population, and to concentrate 
it into more compact groups, would have been particularly unfavorable for the 
persistence of small isolated settlements along the borders. 

The small sites show, as a general rule, little provision for defense against 
enemies. The villages are seldom large, nor do they often occupy protective sites. 
Gradually, however, we begin to see the working of the forces mentioned in the 
last paragraph which were ultimately to bring about the concentrations typical of 

*A parallel phenomenon is seen in the wide and uniform extension of the Archaic culture in middle America, 
see Spinden, 1922, Chap. I. 


126 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


the later prehistoric and the historic Pueblo periods. To what this integration may 
have been due cannot be stated definitely, but I am inclined to see in it the result of 
hostile pressure from without rather than the effect of climatic change. To begin 
with, many of the districts which were shortly to be abandoned are still among the 
most favorable as to water supply in the entire Southwest; secondly, many periph¬ 
eral ruins (as in western Utah and eastern New Mexico) were seemingly 
deserted at an early time; lastly, the more recent villages are larger, and stronger, 
and occupy more easily defensible sites, than the older ones. 

From the very beginning of agricultural life in the Southwest there must have 
been strife between the farmers and the hunting tribes. Even the Basket Makers 
probably had their difficulties with wilder neighbors. But, as has been said before, 
the Southwest is a land too poor in game to have supported a large non-agricultural 
population, and the first sedentary people presumably had few foes to trouble them. 
As the early Pueblos, however, increased in prosperity, and began to extend their 
sphere of influence outward from the point of origin, they presumably came in 
contact with the more powerful hunting tribes of the Great Plains, of the Rocky 
Mountains, and of the northern Plateau. Attacks by these hunters brought the 
latter rich stores of garnered corn, and they soon came to realize that by raiding the 
practically defenseless small towns they could supplement their food-supply and so 
maintain themselves in territory not hitherto open to them because of lack of game. 

It is not necessary to postulate any great incursion of nomads. A few bands 
working in here and there and adopting a semi-parasitic existence might well have 
been sufficient to bring about the observed results. But when such a process was 
started, even in a small way, it must have had the most far-reaching consequences. 
The parasite ultimately destroys its host, and is then forced to seek new prey; and 
the nomad once blooded, so to speak, by the sack of frontier settlements, had to 
push farther in to gratify his new tastes. Ruined fanners, too, their crops 
destroyed or stolen, might themselves have turned hunter-raiders and so increased 
the inward pressure. Wars between village and village, or between stock and stock, 
may also have occurred, but as yet we have little evidence of such feuds. 

There is reason to believe that the region north of the Colorado river was first 
given up, although some settlements evidently held out for a time along the Grand 
Canyon and in the Virgin valley. In the northern San Juan the “unit type” 
villages began to bunch together to form somewhat larger aggregations; the same 
thing appears to have gone on in the Mesa Verde country and south of the San 
Juan. In the Kayenta region there seems at first to have been less trouble. In the 
Rio Grande, the Little Colorado, and the upper Gila and Salt there was also little 
or no change from the easy, small-village life of earlier times. 

Until this stage the danger from the postulated nomads seems to have come 
from the north, and the outlying Pueblos were pushed in, or destroyed. Now, 
however, wild tribes appear to have infiltrated from all sides. They spread out over 
the San Juan basin, and carried their incursions well to the south. The result was 
that the small towns of the San Juan had to be abandoned; but instead of giving up 
the struggle, their inhabitants gathered together in large communities, and these 
large communities became more or less isolated from each other. Thus their 


CONCLUSIONS 


127 


enemies seem to have forced the Pueblos into that very form of life which, by 
fostering communal effort, was to permit them to attain their highest cultural 
achievements. 

I stress here, as before, the influence of the nomadic enemy; for this appears to 
me best to explain the observed facts of Pueblo history. The same facts, however, 
may also be, and indeed have been, explained in accordance with the theory of a 
])rogressive dessication of the Southwest.* During the discussion of the Chaco 
Canyon certain arguments opposed to the dessication theory were presented. 



(white dots). 


and these apply equallv well to the situation in other parts of our area. Although 
the question iskill an open one, the bulk of the evidence now available seems to me 
to indicate that as far back as the time of the Basket Makers the climate was much 
the same as it is today; and that aridity, comparable to that of the^present, has 
from the verv beginning been one of the most vital factors m shaping Southwestern 


‘Hewett, Henderson, and Robbins, 1913; Huntington, 1914. 




















SOUTHWESTERN A R C H A E O L O Y 


U28 

culture. I find it, therefore, hard to believe in a progressive drying up of the 
country during the period of its occupancy by man. 

Whatever the causes may have been, whether aridity, the attacks of savage 
enemies, or a combination of the two; the Pueblos gave up great stretches of out¬ 
lying territory, began to congregate into large communities, and entered that stage 
of their history which we may call the Great Period, or the Period of Specialization 
(see fig. 25). 

In the San Juan it was indeed a Great Period, for it saw the building of the 
Chaco Canyon towns, the Mesa Verde cliff-houses and canyon-head fortresses, as 
well as the imposing cliff-dwellings of the Kayenta country. In the south, compact 
pueblos sprang up on the Rio Grande, on the Little Colorado, and even on the 
Upper Gila and Salt. Still further to the south in northern Chihuahua, and to the 
southwest on the Lower Gila, there were coming into being the great adobe “casas 
grandes”. The archaeology of the latter regions is too little understood to permit 
much speculation as to the origin and growth of their cultures; but though their 
peculiar architecture has no recognized prototype in the Southwest, their pottery is 
definitely puebloan in style. My feeling is that these two related and contem¬ 
poraneous civilizations were rather rapidly achieved results of an amalgamation 
of Mexican Indians, forced northward, with Pueblos forced or strayed south. At 
all events it is probable that the Chihuahua-Gila cultures were just beginning to get 
under way at the time that the maximum development was taking place in the 
Chaco and on the Mesa Verde. 

The underlying causes for the Great Period are not hard to discern. Pressure 
of one sort or another had forced the Pueblos to draw together into large aggrega¬ 
tions, where community of interest stimulated community of effort. The diffi¬ 
culties confronting them were sufficient to spur them to their best endeavors, but 
not great enough to stunt their progress. Life was not too easy, nor yet too hard. 
They had reached that vital moment in their history when opportunity and neces¬ 
sity were evenly balanced. And, as before, the San Juan was the seat of the highest 
development; the achievements of its people in architecture, in the arts, and prob¬ 
ably also in social and religious organization, were obviously of great importance 
in determining the development of the peoples to the south of them. This is most 
clearly seen in the spread of the massed-terraced style of building which during the 
Great Period began to come into vogue in the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado. 

It was fortunate for the persistence of Pueblo culture that these tendencies did 
work southward, for the time of the San Juan was at hand. In spite of all they could 
do, the people of this region were finally forced to give up the struggle; but that they 
made a hard fight of it is witnessed by the strongly fortified nature of the latest 
dwellings, and the protective sites chosen for them, particularly in the frontier 
districts of the north.* But eventually Chaco Canyon was abandoned; then the 
Mesa Verde; lastly the Kayenta plateau; and from that time on the San Juan 
ceased to play any significant part in Pueblo history.f 

*For example, the system of watchtowers evolved in the McElmo-Yellowjacket country (see Morley and 
Kidder, 1917, p. 43). 

tThe occupation of the Gobernador-Largo district after the revolt of 1680 (See Kidder, 1920) ; and the possible 
use of Canyon de Chelley by the Hopi (see Fewkes, 1906) were merely temporary. 


29 


CONCLUSIONS 

5 Ov oXrVNl, : . ■ C ' 1 

As to the date of the desertion of the San Juan we have no information; but 
from the fact that pottery of Toltecan type has been found at Pueblo Bonito, it 
would seem that these ruins must have been inhabited at some time between 800 
and 1100 a.d.* Their abandonment can hardly have been much later than 1100, 
for, as will be shown below, a considerable length of time must have clasped between 
that event and the arrival of Europeans in 1540. 

At the same time as the giving up of the San Jnaii, or shortly after, their 
inhabitants left the villages of the Upper Gila. At a somewhat later date the Lower 
Gila and Chihnahna basin settlements were abandoned. What caused this whole¬ 
sale exodus of the Pueblos from their former homes we do not know. Alany diverse 
factors doubtless operated; but from the fact that the process was merely a continu¬ 
ation of the concentration toward the geographical centre of the Southwest which 
began at the close of the early Pueblo period, it seems likely that the same cause, 
pressure by nomads, was again responsible.! The result in deserted territory 
is obvious, but what the effect upon the actual size of Pueblo population may 
have been, is harder to gauge. There must have been a considerable shrinkage, but 
it is not likely that the entire population of the abandoned regions was wiped out. 
Although I am disinclined to allow any great degree of historical accuracy to the 
Hopi and Zuni clan migration stories, they do seem to indicate that both com¬ 
munities received increments of population from the north and the south. The 
best argument for a movement of people from the peripherae toward the centre is 
provided by the marked increase in the number and size of pueblo ruins of 
relatively late date in and near that centre. During the early Pueblo period and 
even in the Great Period that had just closed, the Rio Grande and the Little Colo¬ 
rado were not very densely populated. The towns of those times (i.e., the black-on- 
white sites) were small when numerous, and few when they became larger; now, 
however, just as the northern and southern districts were being abandoned, villages 
became much more abundant and much greater in size. x\s examples of this we 
may name the great pueblos of the Rio Grande from Socorro to the headwaters of 
the Chama, and the many new towns that sprang up in the Zuni country, along the 
Little Colorado, and about the Hopi mesas. 

I think the connection between the two sets of phenomena, abandonment of 
the outlying districts and sudden increase in population in the central areas, cannot 
be mistaken. The puzzling thing about it is that the incoming people brought with 
them so little of their local cultures. No adobe “casas grandes” were built in the 
Little Colorado, no towns of the Mesa Verde or Chaco types were erected in the 
Rio Grande. The old styles of pottery became extinct, or were altered so rapidly 
and completely that the transitional stages have escaped identification. It would 
seem as if the transference of people must have been by small groups, rather than 
by whole communities, an infiltration rather than a migration. Each successive 
increment became amalgamated with the resident group that it joined, adopted the 
local culture, probably stimulated and strengthened it, possibly influenced it to a 


*For a discussion of Toltecan dating see Spinden, 1922, p. loo; the pottery mentioned above is referred to on 
p. 167. 

tThis is also Nelson’s opinion (1919, fig. 1.). 


130 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


certain extent, but seldom, if ever, succeeded in changing it radically, or in turning 
its course of development sharply away from the channels in which it was already 
running. 

As to the date of this era of redistribution we are as yet ignorant, but we must 
consider that it took place some centuries before 1540, because we have to allow 
time for the rise, development, and partial decline of the glazed pottery technique 
between the end of the Great Period and the coming of the Spaniards. It is reason¬ 
ably certain that Glaze 1 of the Rio Grande series did not originate until after the 
abandonment of the Chaco ruins, for no Glaze 1 pottery, or its accompanying 
Biscuit wares, have ever been found at a Chaco site; nor has any Chaco black-on- 
white turned up in Glaze 1 Rio Grande settlements. As, however, the actual dating 
of many prehistoric ruins may be expected during the next few years, it is not 
necessary or even advisable at the present time to indulge in dating by guesswork. 

When the redistribution had become well advanced, the entire Pueblo popula¬ 
tion was concentrated in the limits indicated on the map (see fig. 25). The shrink¬ 
age in territory held, and probably also to some extent in actual numerical strength, 
was not yet over, for many districts were abandoned between this time and the 
conquest. For example, a great number of large towns on the Chama and its 
tributaries, on the Pajarito plateau, and further south along the Rio Grande were 
certainly deserted before 1540. The same is true of manj^ settlements in the Zuni 
country, along the Little Colorado, and in the Hopi region. In this we seem to see 
merely a continuation of the pressure that had been felt ever since the early days of 
the true Pueblo period, rather than the working of new factors. The upshot of it 
was that in 1540 the entire population was gathered together in sixty or seventy 
towns, strung out along the Rio Grande from Socorro to Taos, and running west¬ 
ward in a narrow, interrupted line through Acoma and Zuni to the Hopi villages. 
The still further shrinkage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the giving 
up of the Piro and Tano areas, and the concentration of many groups of other 
stocks into a smaller number of communities, are matters of documentary record. 
It should be noted that the extermination of the Piro was largely due to the 
persecution of the Apache. 

To recapitulate, the Pueblo civilization owed its origin to stimuli from with¬ 
out, but once well on its feet it developed in its own peculiar way. It passed through 
an early phase of wide territorial expansion marked by great uniformity of culture. 
It then drew in upon itself and enjoyed a period of efflorescence characterized by 
strong specialization in its different branches. Finally it underwent great hard¬ 
ship, suffered a further diminution of territory, and in 1540 was waging a hard 
fight for mere existence. 

Few races have gone as far toward civilization as did the Pueblos while still 
retaining the essential democracy of primitive life. Most other peoples, as they 
advanced from savagery, have first set up for themselves, and later fallen under the 
domination of, rulers temporal or religious; aristocracies or theocracies have sprung 
up, and the gap between the masses and the classes has become wider and wider. 
But among the Pueblos no such tendency ever made headway; there were neither 
very rich nor very poor, every family lived in the saine sort of quarters, and ate the 


CONCLUSIONS 


131 


same sort of food, as every other family. Preeminence in social or religious life 
was to be gained solely by individual ability and was the reward of services rendered 
to the community. 

In the 16th century the Pueblos had fallen upon hard times; they had been 
forced from many of their old ranges, were reduced in numbers, and had lost some¬ 
thing of their former skill in material accomplishments. But their customs had not 
changed, and they still held out undismayed among their savage enemies. There 
can be little doubt that had they been allowed to work out their own salvation, 
they would eventually have overcome their difficulties, and might well have built 
up a civilization of a sort not yet attempted by any group of men. It is the tragedy 
of native American history that so much human effort has come to naught, and that 
so many hopeful experiments in life and in living were cut short by the devastating 
blight of the white man’s arrival. 

The sketch of Pueblo history which has just been presented is the merest 
outline. Great bodies of data have been lumped together, and no account has been 
taken of various complexities which are known to be present in some of the regions 
discussed. Many of the correlations made between one area and another are also 
unsatisfactorily vague, and some of them rest on the unreliable evidence of surface 
finds. Many corrections will have to be made, some of them, perhaps, fundamental. 
But whether or not our working hypothesis can stand the severe tests which we hope 
to apply to it in the future, it has shown how much still remains to be done. Never¬ 
theless, we are far enough along in our studies to realize that the problems of any 
given district can be solved, and that accurate correlations between the different 
districts can eventually be made, so that in the end we shall surely be able to 
reconstruct with surprising fullness the history not only of the Pueblo culture in its 
perfected form, but also that of the early cultures from which it originated. The 
material is remarkably abundant, and, thanks to the dry climate of the Southwest, 
extraordinarily well preserved. I know of no other area in the Americas, with the 
possible exception of Peru, where all the steps in the development of a people from 
nomadic savagery to a comparatively high degree of civilization, can be traced 
so accurately and with such a wealth of detail. 

When the long task is finished, we shall be able to tell a most interesting story, 
but the aim of our researches is, or should be, a much broader one than that. We 
must use our results for the solution of those general problems of anthropological 
science without a true understanding of which we can never hope to arrive at valid 
conclusions as to the history of mankind as a whole. 

Anthropologists, particularly those who have concerned themselves with the 
various manifestations of human culture, have reasoned very loosely, have been 
prone to draw inferences from fragmentary data, to evolve theories which fit well 
with preconceived ideas. In no science is the need for empirical study more keenly 
felt. We have had much writing upon culture growth, trait transmission, divergent 
and convergent evolution, the tendencies of primitive art, the influence of environ¬ 
ment on culture, and the like. But when one examines these writings closely, one 
finds all too often that they are based on data insufficient in quantity or even 
historically incorrect. 


132 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


The Southwest alone cannot, of course, give us final answers to any of these 
broader problems, for the Southwest was only occupied for a relatively short time 
by a single small branch of the human race. But as to that time, and as to that 
people, we can learn a great deal; and we shall have, for this area at least, full data 
which are also historically correct. As chronology is the basis of history, informa¬ 
tion bearing on the age of Southwestern remains is diligently to be sought for, and 
we must be constantly on the lookout for new methods of obtaining it. 

One such new method is that of tree-ring study, devised by Professor A. E. 
Douglass of the University of Arizona, for determining the chronological sequence 
of ruins.* His system is based on the fact that in arid countries like the Southwest 
all vegetable life has a stern struggle for existence. When rainfall is adequate, 
growth is normal; but during the frequent dry years growth is checked in proportion 
to the severity of the drought. Douglass has shown that this irregularity of growth, 
conditioned by irregularity of rainfall, is clearly and accurately recorded in the 
width of the annual rings of trees. In a favorable year a broad, easily recognizable 
ring will be produced; in a bad year an equally characteristic narrow ring. Now let 
us suppose for example that six good years are followed by three rather poor ones, 
then by one very bad, one good, and one very good. A sequence such as this leaves 
a clear record in the rings added to a given tree during those years and one 
which is exceedingly unlikely ever to be exactly duplicated. Douglass has 
further proved that all, or practically all, the trees over a whole district will register 
in exactly the same way. He has also determined that the weather conditions which 
produced the observed variations in ring-growth extended over very considerable 
areas, trees as much as two hundred miles apart often showing exactly parallel 
peculiarities of ring-growth. To illustrate the application of this method, we will 
say that one examines and counts the rings in a section of a tree cut in 1922 in 
Flagstaff, Arizona, and finds that eighty-four rings (i.e., years) in from the bark 
there ended a peculiar sequence of exceptional years, producing a peculiar and easily 
recognizable sequence of rings. This sequence must therefore have ended in 1922 
minus 84, or in other words in 1838. One now examines in section a log used, say, 
as a roof-beam in an old house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and discovers that the 
same peculiar sequence of rings occurs twenty rings in from the bark; thus it is 
shown that the Santa Fe log was cut in 1838 plus 20, i.e., in 1858. Extending his 
investigations, Douglass has employed the same process for trees not actually 
datable, and has studied sections from the roof-beams of prehistoric ruins. Through 
the cooperation of the American Museum of Natural History he was enabled to 
examine sections of beams from the great Aztec ruin, and recognized in each of them 
certain peculiar and characteristic groups of rings which allowed him to determine 
the relative dates of the cutting of the logs. To express these dates conveniently he 
assigned an arbitrary date, R. d. (Relative Date) 500 to a certain easily recogniz¬ 
able ring and expressed all dates with reference to that year. He found that most 
of the beams examined had been cut during two periods, namely, in r.d. 524-525, and 
in R. D. 528. The next series of beams to be examined came from Pueblo Bonito, 
some sixty-five miles to the south, and in these he recognized the same characteristic 

*See Douglass, 1921, 1922, 1922, a; Wissler, 1921. 


CONCLUSIONS 


133 


ring groups that he had found at Aztec. By counting from them he was able to 
determine that the Bonito logs had been cut between forty and fifty years earlier 
than those at Aztec (i.e., in about r. d. 484). 

hen it is remembered how much material in the way of roof-beams, terracing 
logs, and other wood-work is still preserved in the ruins of the Southwest, it can 
readily be realized what vast possibilities have been opened up by Douglass’s 
remarkable discovery; for example, we shall undoubtedly be able to make out the 
exact order of erection of many of the great Mesa Verde cliff-houses, and even 
determine the relative date of building of parts of structures, such as single rooms, 
kivas, etc. The prospect is fairly dazzling. 

In discussing the archaeological evidence, and in considering Douglass’s 
method as well, we have confined ourselves to the relative dating of remains of man 
in the Southwest. It has been shown, I hope, that the outlook is bright, and 
that patient work will eventually enable us to arrange in approximately their proper 
order all the ruins that we know at the present time, or shall find in the future. 
IVe must not, however, allow ourselves to evade the issue of absolute chronology; 
for if we could apply dates, even if only approximate ones, to the main stages of 
Southwestern development, our historical perspective would not only be greatly 
sharpened, but we should also have acquired data of the utmost value for the 
solution of many of the broader problems of anthropology^ such problems, for 
example, as those of the rate of acceleration in culture, the rapidity of the spread of 
culture traits, etc. 

For arriving at the age of the basic stages of Southwestern culture, such as the 
Basket Maker, we have as yet no reliable evidence whatever. No way of applying 
geological methods to the problem has been discovered. Help might be derived from 
a correlation of the Basket ]Maker period with some stage in the history of Mexican 
culture, but the actual chronology of early Mexico is by no means clear.* We 
must for the present, therefore, be content to work back through the Pueblo and 
pre-Pueblo periods from our historic datum of 1540 a. d. Two lines of research 
seem promising: tree-rings studies, and correlation with the known chronology of 
the Maya area. 

It has been shown above that the relative dating of prehistoric sites in the 
Southwest may be accomplished by Douglass’s method of tree-ring study. This 
line of investigation has also been extended to include the great sequoias of the 
Pacific Coast. It has been found that in the annual rings of these exceedingly 
long-lived trees there are preserved weather records, so to speak, reaching back for 
3,000 years,t and it is possible that certain of the more marked peculiarities in 
tree-ring growth may be due to weather conditions so widespread as to have 
affected regions as far distant as the Southwest, and that beams used in prehistoric 
pueblos and cliff-houses may yet be actually dated by comparing their rings with 
those of the sequoias. 

Even should the sequoias fail us as a time-index, the tree-ring method may yet. 


*If there is a single problem of outstanding importance for American archaeology, it is that of dating the 
origin of corn-growing and the rise of the Archaic culture in the highlands of Mexico. 
fHuntington, 1913. 


134 


SOUTHWESTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 


it seems to me, be used for ascertaining the actual date of many prehistoric ruins. 
For example, there are in the New Mexico mission churches many large beams 
which were cut in the early and middle parts of the 17th century; some of these 
bear carved dates, but all of them should be accurately datable by comparing their 
outer rings with the inner rings of the three and four hundred years old pines still 
growing today in the nearby mountains. We may next compare the inner rings of 
the mission beams with the outer rings of beams from such ruins as stratigraphic 
studies of the pottery show to have been inhabited during the later stages of per- 
historic times. This process may be pursued indefinitely, and it is not beyond the 
bounds of possibility that we may eventually be able to establish reliable series of 
overlapping tree-growths extending from the present day back to the time when the 
ancestors of the Pueblos first began to use large timbers in the construction of their 
houses.* 

While Douglass’s method gives us our best hope for absolute chronology, we 
must not fail to undertake a second line of investigation which, although it cannot 
provide us with more than approximate dates, may still serve to throw light on the 
age of many Southwestern ruins, and act as a cross-check on such results as may be 
attained by the Douglass system. This second line of investigation must consist in 
an attempt to determine the time-correlation between the ruins of the Southwest 
and those of the Maya culture of Central America. This may appear a far 
cry, but one bit of evidence is already at hand, and much more may confidently be 
expected. 

The Maya people, as is well known, erected monuments bearing a wealth of 
contemporary dates which not only are decipherable, but have been corre¬ 
lated with considerable precision with the years of our own system of chronology.! 
This of course provides for students of Maya archaeology an excellent basis for 
working out the development of Maya pottery, lapidary work, etc. Hence it should 
eventually be possible to date with fair accuracy any given Maya pot, jade ornament, 
or other specimen. Aboriginal trade having been surprisingly active and far- 
reaching, it is reasonable to suppose that datable Maya objects will be found in, say, 
central Mexican sites. A few such finds would fix the approximate date of those 
sites beyond reasonable doubt. Objects characteristic of the thus datable central 
Mexican cultures may be expected from northern Mexico, northern Mexican 
specimens from southern New Mexico, and so on. Such dating naturally becomes 
less and less accurate as we recede from the starting point, for many as yet un- 
assessable factors enter, such as the rate of travel for trade-objects, the persistency 
of objects among a people as heirlooms, etc. Nevertheless much may be done, and 
the technological and artistic studies necessary for carrying out the attempt are 
in themselves well worth while. 

As was said above, there is already one bit of evidence at hand. From Pueblo 
Bonito Pepper collected sherds of a certain type of cloisonne pottery characteristic 
of one phase of the Toltec culture. Fragments of the same, or a closely allied, ware 

♦There are few Southwestern ruins from which some beam-material cannot be recovered by careful work. 
Professor Douglass informs me that he has secured useful data from badly decayed, and even from charred, logs 
It is evident that no opportunity for the collection of such specimens should be overlooked. 

tSpinden, 19'22, p. 129. 


CONCLUSIONS 


135 


have l>een found at a jNIaya site, Chichen Itza, in Yucatan, While it cannot yet be 
stated just how old the Toltec ruins (which are the headquarters of this pottery) 
may be, there is no question but that their age will in the near future be ascertained 
with reasonable accuracy, and then it will be possible to give an approximate date 
for the occupation of Pueblo Bonito. That anything so fragile as pottery should 
have been carried in aboriginal trade all the way from central Mexico to northern 
New Mexico is very surprising. It is also encouraging, for it gives rise to the 
hope that many other INIexican objects less difficult of transportation will yet be 
found in Southwestern sites. 


We have briefly summarized the data at present available for the study of 
Southwestern archaeology; have made an attempt to fit these data together into 
a historical reconstruction; and, finally, have pointed out the need for further 
chronological information, both relative and absolute. The place of Pecos in the 
general archaeological scheme is now clear, for of all the stratified sites in the 
Southwest, Pecos is the largest and was the longest inhabited. If a single outstand¬ 
ing fact has become apparent in our survey, it is the great value of stratigraphy, 
first for determining the sequence of local types and for solving local problems, 
secondly, for the possibilities that it holds out for providing cross-finds of con¬ 
temporaneous non-local types and so for solving the broader and more important 
problems of inter-area chronology. It is by work of this sort that we shall even¬ 
tually be enabled to piece together the story of the Pueblos and of their ancestors, 
and by an extension of it shall ultimately recover the history of all the higher 
American civilizations. 



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